Unit 1: Marketing - Concept and process of marketing - Definitions
Exchange relationships
Marketing as managing an exchange process
This last definition is the one that most modern marketing writers support. Piercy (1997) makes a distinction between ‘marketing plan marketing' – the activities that traditional marketing departments do – and the concept of ‘going to market’ – a much more general management issue. He writes:
‘Marketing’ belongs to marketing specialists but ‘going to market’ is a process owned by everyone in the organisation.
This approach sees marketing as managing an exchange process. In commercial (for-profit) organisations, products and services are exchanged for money and resources. In non-profit organisations, goods and services are sometimes exchanged for money and sometimes also to support ideas and beliefs. An example might make this clearer – why do I buy my Christmas cards from Oxfam rather than from the local supermarket? There is a commercial exchange, i.e. a card for money, but also there is an exchange based on ideas and beliefs. Buying from Oxfam enables me to support their ideas and beliefs and to feel good about spending money on a worthwhile cause.
Examples of other exchange relationships are shown in Figure 1.
Marketing as the managing of exchange relationships is described in the following extract:
Marketing consists of individual and organisational activities that facilitate and expedite satisfying exchange relationships in a dynamic environment through the creation, distribution, promotion and pricing of goods, services and ideas.
Piercy (1997) describes this approach to marketing as a market-led approach – others refer to it as pan-company marketing. The distinguishing feature of both these approaches is that they emphasise that every department in the organisation is involved with the customer – not just the marketing department. I shall use the terms market-led, market orientation and pan-company marketing throughout the text to describe this organisation-wide customer-led approach.
Another suggestion is that:
Marketing is too important to leave to the marketing department.
