Marketing History

Marketing represents a new philosophy concerning the guidance and achievement of human activities, no matter what their nature is. The essence of this new concept is satisfying the needs of the consumer through quality, genuine value and services.

Marketing is a practical way of action that uses specific instruments to investigate various factors in order to substantiate the decisions inside an organization. This became a necessity as a result of market tightening, economic globalization and increased competition.

The evolution of marketing can be divided into 3 stages:

  1. The mass production markets (starting in 1850s).
  2. The modern concept of marketing (1960s) that focuses on identifying and meeting the consumer's needs.
  3. The relational marketing that concentrates on the need of long term partnership with the client.

Analyzing the company's focus, we can distinguish also 3 phases:

  1. Focus on production(1850 - 1920). The companies concentrated only on production, while there was a significant unsatisfied demand. They were focused on mass production and price reduction.
  2. Focus on sales(1920 - 1950). Motivated by the specific needs of various groups of population that resulted in demand differentiation. There is a slowdown in the sales of mass produced goods that causes the manufacturer to consider the stimulation of sales through promotion.
  3. Focus on marketing(1950 - ). The manufacturers take into account the needs of the consumers when conceiving and creating the products. The transition is made from focusing on production and sales to the consumer and its needs.

Noticeable is also the evolution of the concept of marketing:

  1. Marketing is oriented mainly on products and services providers.
  2. The enlarged marketing concept extends on all types of organizations, both profit-oriented or nonprofit.
  3. The new institutionalized concept, based on an economic approach of market dynamics and a balance between the actions of satisfying the customers and cost control, with the objective of maximizing the profit.

Nowadays there is a new direction of marketing activities called societal marketing.

Societal marketing is considered to be the civilization marketing because it takes into account general concerns of the society along with company's and customers' needs.

Therefore, the companies based on societal marketing intend to :