ROLES OF MARKETING MIX IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATION A CASE STUDY OF LUBCON NIGERIA LIMITED

CHAPTER ONE

1.0 GENERAL INTRODUCTION 

Several explanatory notes have been proposed for the term Marketing. Each tends to emphasized different issues concerning marketing as well as drawing a valid conclusion.

Many definitions of marketing have been put forth over the years. A popular one holds that “Marketing is the performance of business activities that direct the flow of goods and service from producer to consumer or end user”

The American Marketing Association (1995) offers managerial definition of marketing: Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and service to create exchange that satisfy individual and organizational goals.

Philip Kotler (Custom Edition 2005), says marketing is the methodology of communicating the value of products and services to customers for the purpose of selling the products and service. This involves some techniques such as choosing the target marketing through market analysis and segmentation, understanding consumer behaviour and advertising the product value to the customers. 

In marketing, marketers use numerous tools to elicit the desired responses from their target market. These tools constitute Marketing Mix (McCarthy, 1999); Marketing Mix is the set of marketing tools that business organization use to pursue their Marketing objective in the target market. These include: Product, Price and Promotion; popularly known as four Ps

In a general sense, this research project bring to light how Marketing Mix allow business organization to build and sell value to their ultimate customers and also getting better return on their investment.

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

A business organization is an entity formed for the purpose of carrying out commercial activities. It can also be analysed as an individual or group of people that collaborate to achieve certain commercial goals and this can be achieved by a well-structured marketing system.

Marketing (Kotler, 1991) is not the art of clever ways to dispose of what you make or producer. It is an art of creating genuine customers’ value and helping them become better-off. The introductory part of this project discussed marketing as a means of identifying customers’ needs and supply various goods and services to satisfy those needs most effective. 

A business organization needs to produce goods and services, make it at a price the consumers find reasonable, supply the good and services at different outlets the consumers can conveniently access and also inform them about the product and services through the media they have access to. All these can be attributed to a set of controllable variables and the controllable variables in this context refer to four “PS” (Product, Price, Place and Promotion) which constitute marketing mix. Each firm or business organization strive to build up such a composition of four ‘p’s which can create highest level of consumer satisfaction and at the same time meet its organization objective and goals i.e. Maximization of sales and profit, Bigger market share, survival in the market amongst others. The impact of these variables on business organization form the basis of this research project putting into consideration the case study: LUBCON NIGERIA LIMITED ILORIN, KWARA STATE.