06 Nov Social Media at the top of the current marketing orientation

Any form of marketing is tasked with meeting the needs of customers by supplying a product or service.

The basic concept of marketing has been around for centuries, as early as bartering wood for beans by the riverside! The approach however is a constant evolving entity, fundamentally tied to our own cultural and societal evolution.

The 1950’s brought western civilisation a production orientation to marketing where organisations harnessed production technology and began manufacturing products to meet society’s basic needs. Products were exchanged for money and companies, in turn, tweaked and mass produced to stock our stores and homes.

Next progressed a sales orientation where businesses had to sell, sell, sell the hundreds of products being produced. Items were ‘pushed’ onto consumers and advertising really came into its own.

As the consumer became more outspoken about their needs, marketing became sophisticated and companies ‘listened’ more, putting the consumer at the centre of it’s process; conceiving a market orientation.

Green initiatives, environmentally friendly resources and corporate responsibility surround our whole supply chain these days, constituting a societal approach to marketing.

With the huge explosion of social media, offering a voice to the consumer that can reach the Director’s board, the marketing process has evolved full circle, once again, to a one to one relationship approach.

From the emergence of the market orientation to the subjective societal orientation and the harmonious relationship orientation, marketing, and in particular, social media merges the boundary between all three approaches, opening a true two-way communication process between customer and supplier.