Saturday, June 12, 2010

Marketing : Selling Concept

The selling concept, another common business orientation, holds that consumers and businesses, if left alone, will ordinarily not buy enough of the organization’s products. The organization must, therefore, undertake an aggressive selling and promotion effort. This concept assumes that consumers must be coaxed into buying, so the company has a battery of selling and promotion tools to stimulate buying.

The selling concept is practiced most aggressively with unsought goods—goods that buyers normally do not think of buying, such as insurance and funeral plots. The selling concept is also practiced in the nonprofit area by fund-raisers, college admissions offices, and political parties. Most firms practice the selling concept when they have overcapacity. Their aim is to sell what they make rather than make what the market wants. In modern industrial economies, productive capacity has been built up to a point where most markets are buyer markets (the buyers are dominant) and sellers have to scramble for customers. Prospects are bombarded with sales messages. As a result, the public often identifies marketing with hard selling and advertising. But marketing based on hard selling carries high risks.

By the early 1930's however, mass production had become commonplace,
competition had increased, and there was little unfulfilled demand. Around this
time, firms began to practice the sales concept (or selling concept), under which
companies not only would produce the products, but also would try to convince
customers to buy them through advertising and personal selling. Before
producing a product, the key questions were:

•Can we sell the product?

•Can we charge enough for it?

The sales concept paid little attention to whether the product actually was
needed; the goal simply was to beat the competition to the sale with little regard
to customer satisfaction. Marketing was a function that was performed after the
product was developed and produced, and many people came to associate
marketing with hard selling. Even today, many people use the word "marketing"
when they really mean sales.

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