Introduction to Marketing I (MKTG 1010)

Why It Matters: What Is Marketing?

When you hear the term “marketing,” what comes to mind?

Based on what you know about marketing right now, what one word would you use to describe it? Take a moment to write it down. We’ll come back to it shortly.

Marketing is a tool used by companies, organizations, and people to shape our perceptions and persuade us to change our behaviour. The most effective marketing uses a well-designed strategy and a variety of techniques to alter how people think about and interact with the product or service in question. Less-effective marketing causes people to turn off, tune out, or not even notice.

Why should you care about marketing? Marketing is an ever-present force in modern society, and it can work amazingly well to influence what we do and why we do it. Consider these points:

Marketing can use a variety of elements to shape perceptions and behaviour: words, images, design, experiences, emotions, stories, relationships, humor, sex appeal, etc. And it can use a wide variety of tactics, from advertising and events to social media and search-engine optimization. Often the purpose is to sell products, but as you can see from the examples above, the goal of any specific marketing effort may have little to do with money and much more to do with what you think and do.

By the time you finish this course, you will have a broader understanding of marketing beyond TV commercials and billboards and those annoying pop-up ads on the websites you visit. You’ll learn how to see marketing for what it is. You’ll learn how to be a smart consumer and a smart user of marketing techniques when the need for them arises in your life.

Go back to that word you jotted down to describe marketing at the top of the page. Now that you’ve had a little more exposure to the concept, what word comes to mind to describe “marketing”? Is it the same word you chose earlier, or are you starting to think differently?

• Explain how the marketplace addresses customer wants and needs by creating opportunities for the exchange of products, services, and experiences
• Describe the role marketing plays in facilitating the exchange of value
• Define marketing

Marketing is more than just banner ads, television commercials, and people standing on roadsides dressed up like the Statue of Liberty during tax time. It’s a complex set of activities and strategies that influences where we live, what we wear, how we conduct business, and how we spend our time and money. Marketing activities are conducted in an environment that changes quickly both in terms of customer demand and the methods by which consumers obtain information and make purchases. However, before you learn about these complex variables, you will need a good working definition of marketing. The following video has one (actually two).

What Is Marketing?

Marketing is a set of activities related to creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for others. In business, the function of marketing is to bring value to customers, whom the business seeks to identify, satisfy, and retain. This course will emphasize the role of marketing in business, but many of the concepts will apply to non-profit organizations, advocacy campaigns, and other activities aimed at influencing perceptions and behaviour.