ABSTRACT
The topic, the application of the marketing concept in the marketing of agricultural products is an interesting topic, which has given the researcher a challenging opportunity to investigate, and was able to come forward with certain facts about the topic.
As the topic implies, the marketing concept is a philosophy that holds that the customer satisfaction is the social and economic justification for the existence of a business agriculture as a form of business is not in exemption when it comes to the marketing of its products. Have, poultry business is sampled out and the application of marketing concept in the marketing of its products, in the course of researching into this associated with poultry management and how it will affect the consumers if the farmers are marketing oriented rather than sales oriented.
Such problems are discussed in details in chapters of the research work and useful recommendation suggestion made to guide poultry farmers who apt to practice real marketing ethics and its concepts if applied will help them to remain in the business successfully.
1.0INTRODUCTION
It was become quite evident that agriculture has become the most important sector among numerous sectors of the economy in Nigeria. as a result, all other sectors depend largely on agriculture for their success. Agriculture is therefore defined as all the processes involved in the production of plant and animal product for man’s use. It entails the cultivation of crops of reaving of domestic animals, harvesting those crops and reaving of domestic animals. Processing as well as delivering them to the final users at the right time, place and at affordable price.
From the above definition of agriculture one may rightly deduce that it include all the national gifts, which God freely endows us with. They include land, trees, and all the raw materials gotten from land for the manufacturing of numerous agricultural products. It also includes the industrial crops that serve as raw materials to agro – based industries. Agriculture is basically divided into two major parts namely: crop production and animal production. Crop production deals with the production of all classes of crops e.g carrels, legumes, roots, tubers, vegetables and fruits, while under animal production otherwise known as livestock production deals with the production of all kinds of domestic animals like poultry diary, fisheries etc.
Infact, there are in existence numerous agricultural products. We discover that most of the goods sold in most markets are agricultural goods. Since agricultural products are vast, we are narrowing it to a sector, which will help us to limiting our scope of study so as to achieve a better result on the concept under study, which is the application of the marketing concept in the marketing of agricultural products. When this is verified, we can now attribute it to the other agricultural products and know how they relate to the marketing concept. In this vein, therefore the researcher is narrowing down the study to poultry production to see how the marketing concept is upheld and applied in the business.
As it has been established earlier on that agriculture is the most important sector of economy in Nigeria. It is also evident that poultry husbandry has also become very common and even the people of Nigeria at large and specially Abia State.
The need for agricultural marketing arises with production of excess and above consumption. This portion that is marketed is known as the marketable surplus. When such products are produced in abundance, the need to distribute them to people that will need them also arises. This then calls for marketing, which involves the production, storage, processing, distribution and pricing of such products.
The application of marketing concept in the marketing of agricultural (poultry) products is the scope of this research work. The researcher wants to compare the practice in the poultry business with the recommend application of this marketing concept, which determines, the success of the business.