The role of marketing in any organization - a business or non-business - is to improve the performance of the organization. This occurs through disciplined focus on creating, developing and maintaining profitable relationships between customers and the organization. Marketers have so many different ways to accomplish this result that the practice of marketing is much more complicated than any short discussion of it can convey. And, there is far more to marketing than the unfortunate stereotypes - fast-talking salespeople and manipulative advertisers - one sees in movies. This note will explain the major choices that professional marketers face and the ways in which marketing decisions are made. The note covers such topics as defining the marketing challenge, identifying market opportunities and selecting target markets, deciding on the product/service offering, distribution approaches, marketing communications, developing and retaining customers, and assessing the marketing program.
