Production Concept
The idea of production concept – “Consumers will favor products that are available and highly affordable”. This concept is one of the oldest Marketing management orientations that guide sellers.
Companies adopting this orientation run a major risk of focusing too narrowly on their own operations and losing sight of the real objective.
Most times; the production concept can lead to marketing myopia. Management focuses on improving production and distribution efficiency.
Although;
in some situations; the production concept is still a useful philosophy.
Product Concept
The product concept holds that the consumers will favor products that offer the most in quality, performance and innovative features.
Here; under this concept,
Marketing strategies are focused on making continuous product improvements.
Product quality and improvement are important parts of marketing strategies, sometimes the only part. Targeting only on the company’s products could also lead to marketing myopia.
For example;
Suppose a company makes the best quality Floppy disk. But a customer does really need a floppy disk?
She or he needs something that can be used to store the data. It can be achieved by a USB Flash drive, SD memory cards, portable hard disks, and etc.
So that company should not look to make the best floppy disk. They should focus to meet the customer’s data storage needs.
Selling Concept
The selling concept holds the idea- “consumers will not buy enough of the firm’s products unless it undertakes a large-scale selling and promotion effort”.
Here the management focuses on creating sales transactions rather than on building long-term, profitable customer relationships.
In other words;
The aim is to sell what the company makes rather than making what the market wants. Such aggressive selling program carries very high risks.
In selling concept the marketer assumes that customers will be coaxed into buying the product will like it, if they don’t like it, they will possibly forget their disappointment and buy it again later. This is usually very poor and costly assumption.
Typically the selling concept is practiced with unsought goods. Unsought goods are that buyers do not normally think of buying, such as insurance or blood donations.
These industries must be good at tracking down prospects and selling them on a product’s benefits.
Marketing Concept
The marketing concept holds- “achieving organizational goals depends on knowing the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions better than competitors do”.
Here marketing management takes a “customer first” approach.
Under the marketing concept, customer focus and value are the routes to achieve sales and profits.
The marketing concept is a customer-centered “sense and responds” philosophy. The job is not to find the right customers for your product but to find the right products for your customers.
The marketing concept and the selling concepts are two extreme concepts and totally different from each other.
