Overview Of The Main Eras In Marketing Evolvement

Marketing is not a newly discovered field of study, it has been there ever since human beings have been selling things. It has been around for a long time. Even though marketing nowadays is a mixture of both strategy and technology, it hasn’t always been this way. It began with modest beginnings to exchange goods and services which have been around the times of ancient India. People may not have recognised this as an actual form of marketing at that time, but this where the idea of marketing started to evolve.

The production orientation era

During the industrial revolution, the availability of goods was limited and hence the manufacturers could sell all the goods they could produce, as long as the people could afford to purchase them. The main aim of majority of the companies operating at this time was to spend minimal amount of money for their production and distribution. The companies believed that trade could be carried out by minimising manufacturing cost and passing the cost savings to consumers in the form of lower prices. The production era which started after the Civil war in 1861 continued to the late 1920’s. This period was a result of Henry Ford’s employment of the assembly line and more effective principals developed by Frederick W. The introduction of mass production also helped companies to decrease their cost of production which in turn increased their operating income. This also made their products appealing to a large segment of customers.

Unfortunately, unstable economic conditions during the 1920s and 1940s resulted in the failure of businesses in spite their adoption of production centred philosophy of doing business. This led to companies seeking new ways to facilitate the exchange process.

The sales orientation era

The starting of 21st century following the Second World War saw the increased competition among businesses and the growing focus of selling. Advertising, branding and various other promotional techniques were now considered important for companies to sell their increasing outputs of production. Businesses started communicating and persuading consumers on why one manufacturer’s good was better than the other. This way of thinking was mainly due to the economic condition of the time.

People during this time has little or no disposable income to spend on luxury items due to the increase in the unemployment rate. Businesses could no longer sell all the goods that they produced in spite the lowered prices due to mass production. Hence companies relied on personal selling, commercials and advertisements to get rid of their excess production to convert products into cash. At this time, the market was not necessarily concerned with satisfying the consumer but focused more on selling the goods.

The marketing orientation era

The marketing era started around the mid 1950’s. During this time, the market place faced a fundamental shift because instead of trying to convince customers to buy the goods, they were producing, businesses started producing goods that consumers wanted to buy. This was the era in which market research fuelled off as companies wanted to incorporate the needs and wants of the customers into the products they were producing.

Marketing thus became more sophisticated where manager started making strategic decisions involving what to be produced, where it should be sold, how much to charge for it and the way of communicating it to the customers (Marketing mix). This era is focused more on customer needs where companies believe on gaining profits by satisfying the needs of customer through product, price, place and promotion.

The Relationship Marketing Era

This era mainly focuses on building long lasting relationship with customers to foster customer loyalty so that they repeat buying the company’s products. The need of consumer retention became more important as the cost involved in attracting a new customer much higher than the cost of retaining the current customers and keeping them happy.

Marketers are now aiming to build stronger relationships among the brands and people. Companies are always connected to the customer all over the world in real time and are always finding new ways to advertise and make customers come back to them.