The Product Philosophy  (1850-1900):

The era culminated development of innovative products which did not have substitutes, customer needs might not be too much a demand since customers may not know their needs in such innovative market situation.

Consequently, organizations did not need to consult with consumers about designing and producing their products. Much as some companies may still have a product oriented business thinking that direct their operations, the concept is not popular in today’s business environment. A product philosophy often leads to the company focusing on the product rather than on the consumer needs that must be satisfied [5], which leads to ‘marketing myopia’

With nature of today’s customers and business environment the product philosophy might be a failure today, except for introduction of new products where there may be insufficient customer knowledge and competition.

The Selling Philosophy  (1930-1950):

The shortest marketing era was with the orientation that the company can sell any product it produces with the use of marketing techniques, such as advertising and personal selling. The concept assumes that “consumers are unlikely to buy the product unless they are aggressively persuaded to do so – mostly that ‘hard sell’ approach”

The selling concept takes an ‘inside-out’ perspective. It starts with the factory, focuses on the company’s existing products, and calls for heavy selling and promotion to obtaining profitable sales. It focuses primarily on customer conquest – getting short-term sales with little concern about who buys or why.”

The Marketing Philosophy  (1950-now):

This philosophy assumes that the starting point for any marketing process is the customer needs and wants, and no longer the aggressive selling. The key assumption underlying the marketing philosophy is that “a market should make what it can sell, instead of trying to sell what it has made”

The marketing concept takes an ‘outside-in’ perspective. The marketing concept starts with a well-defined market, focuses on customer needs, and integrates all the marketing activities that affect the customers. In turn, it yields profits by creating lasting relationship with the right customers based on customer value satisfaction”.

Selling focuses on the needs of the seller; marketing on the needs of the buyer.

The Societal Marketing Philosophy  (1970-now):

This means the societal marketing philosophy emphasises the need not only to consider the customer in product decisions but also his immediate environment. The appropriateness of societal marketing philosophy is deduced from the fact that it supports a socially responsible behavior of organization.

Happy society is more likely to buy and to recommend a firm’s product, while an angry society will refuse purchase of a company’s product even if it could satisfy the needs of the customer.

Continued ….