The Job of the Marketing and Sales Department

The Job of the Marketing and Sales Department

Marketing is concerned with getting the right product to the right

people at the right price. Its function is essential for the success

of any business. Most of the time products that are flops are due to

poor marketing. A firm has to get the 4P's right to make it easy to

sell its product. Businesses find out the views and opinions of

consumers either by primary research which means going out on the

field your self directly to communicate to the consumers. E.g. in the

street, over the phone, interviews and questionnaires. The advantage

to primary research is that it provides data that's up to date,

relevant and specific to your products. However it's expensive to

collect, it's time consuming and need's a large sample size to be

accurate.

Or by secondary research which involves you using an existing

published material like statistics and reference books, to gather

information. Secondary research is useful for looking at the whole

market and analysing past trends to predict the future. E.g. Market

research reports Mintel government publications like family

expenditure survey, newspaper and Magazine articles. Advantage-it's

easily found and instantly available. However it is not always

relevant to your needs, it's not specifically about your products and

it's often out of data.

Or loyalty cards which record everything a consumer buys and also

gives out rewards to the consumers depending on how much they spend. A

business identifies different groups of consumers using market

segments. E.g. Age, Gender, Income, wealth, geographical area and

lifestyle. They do this because it helps to direct their marketing

effort towards the right people. They can even classify consumers from

target groups which consist of a range of ages.

A business can get some sort of idea of the consumers' choices and

lifestyle from the type of area they live in. Each area would have

different type of consumers living in them. Businesses mainly use

postcodes. Some target groups are wealthier than others and some areas