were creating and the logistics needed to
get the products to the markets.
As the production capacity increased
and production processes improved,
economies of scale were achieved, prices
came down and demand for products
grew at an exponential rate domestically
and in new settler markets especially
America.
This was when the marketing P for
product and the marketing P for place
were the most important. The demand was
there, the products were there, the only
challenge was to get the product to the
places they were required. Distribution
was key to success.
The market responded with great
improvements in logistics spearheaded
by the locomotive trains that opened new
frontiers for commerce as raw material
could now be transported in bulk and the
manufactured goods could be delivered to
markets.
The need to power locomotives and
vehicles led to the discovery of oil fields,
especially in America, that was really the
reason that country was able to leap-frog
the European counterparts and emerge as
an economic powerhouse that drove the
world.
Soon the focus switched from production
and onto the products themselves and
differentiation became the new mantra as
manufacturers competed to offer products
in many variations. Marketers spent
millions on research and development to
get the consumer just the right product.
The product orientation had set and it
averred that consumers had a preference
for products that had better quality, better
performance and better features. The era
of the mass produced goods that were
just functional but did not stand out was
eclipsed.
Soon industries were operating at
full throttle and the new markets had
adequately been served, innovations had
put even more differentiated products
on the shelves and services on offer at
increasingly affordable prices and at
a faster rate that pushing the product
became the challenge.
There were now far too many products
52 MAL25/18 ISSUE
There are the real
quacks who have
done a certificate or
been a merchandiser
in a supermarket pro-
motion and are now
passing themselves
off as marketers. The
ability of any person
to practice without
formal qualification
is the real danger to
the profession long time it completely dominated the
marketing platform and it gave birth to
the big misnomer of the title of Sales and
Marketing Manager. A subset had become
the whole.
available that had to be matched with
the available markets and that was the
birth of the sales orientation. It was now
necessary to go out and find the customer
that needed your product. This gave rise to the next marketing stage
where it was felt that the customer who
was supposed to be at the core of marketing
had been sidelined as the salesman run
roughshod on the consumer. The logic
was that if you asked the consumer what
he wanted beforehand, you would have an
easier time selling.
The glut that had been created by mass
production and the attendant lowering of
costs meant that the manufacturers could
afford to lower their prices and still make
a huge profit due to volume sales. The
merchants also had leeway in determining
the price they could offer the market.
This is when the P of promotion and the
P of Price came into prominence and
the famous definition of marketing as
the provision of the right product, at the
right price with the right promotion at
the right place was first used.
This was also destined to be the golden age
of marketing because the P of promotion
included sales and advertising, the two
ingredients that were to shape the nature
of marketing for decades and what made
America the powerhouse of marketing.
We hear stories of great salesmen, the
type that were famed as being able to sell
ice to Eskimos and their counterparts
in the advertising agency who become
legend due to the creativity of their word
smiths and artists who turned marketing
into a fine art.
So great was the status of salesmanship
in the American context that for a
But the era of the swashbuckling salesman
was coming to an end as was poignantly
portrayed in the Arthur Miller book titled
‘The death of a salesman’ which chronicles
the last twenty four hours of a New York
salesman in the late 1940’s, unable to
accept changes in himself and the society
at large.
The title suggests a coming to an end of
a great period of economic growth and
the ensuing loss of identity and a feeling
of the world caving in and heralds a new
era where the salesman is not the king of
the roost but an expendable entity whose
demise goes unnoticed.
We had by now entered the marketing
orientation and what companies were
doing was to analyze their customer
needs and find ways to satisfy those needs
better than the competition. We would
like to think that this where most of the
companies operate but experience says
otherwise.
What we need to note is that the different
orientations are not chronological but
are developmental. One is supposed to
graduate from one orientation to the other
as the need arises and not that the whole
world migrates in unison.
Today there are many companies that are
still in the production orientation. Those
companies that are a natural monopoly
like power companies and gas suppliers
are still concerned about providing their
products and services by making them
widely available and inexpensive.
The companies on this orientation are
still concentrating on attaining high
production efficiency, trying to reduce
their production costs and still endeavor
to aim at achieving mass distribution.