Marketing is much more than simply a department, or a body of techniques: it is central to the whole reason for an organization's being and to its relationship with its market and its customers. While, of course, many activities of a company are important, it is a truism that any kind of organization can create profits only out in the market. So, unless marketing activity, in the fullest sense of the term, creates a situation whereby customers buy in sufficient quantity, producing the right revenue and doing so at the right time, no business operation will be commercially viable. Marketing has to produce in customers a reason to buy, and make it a more powerful one than that which any competitor produces. Whatever the many elements involved, the key is to focus on customer needs and set out to satisfy them at a profit.

Inspec keywords: marketing; profitability; industrial economics; organisational aspects

Other keywords: business operation; marketing activity; profits; customers; revenue; organization

Subjects: Marketing and sales