Marketing refers to the social and managerial processes by which products, services, and value are exchanged in order to fulfill individuals' or groups' needs and wants. These processes include, but are not limited to, advertising, promotion, distribution, and product management. The following outline provides an overview and topical guide to the subject:

Marketers may sell goods or services directly to consumers, known as business to customer (B2C marketing), commercial organizations (known as business to business marketing or B2B), the government, not-for-profit organizations (NFP) or some combination of any of these.

Actors and relationships At the center of the marketing framework lies the relationship between the consumer and the organization with the implication that marketers must manage the way the organization presents its public face.

Consumer: Typically, the consumer refers to the end-user, but this may be an individual or group such as a household, family unit or organization. In addition, marketers may need to consider the roles of influencers such as opinion leaders who increasingly use means such as social media to develop customer to customer networks of influence.

Organization: may be represented by many different actors, including various sales personnel: agent, broker, sales representative, merchant, retailer, street vendor or vendor.

Selling situations: Depending on the nature of the business operations, many different types of actors are involved in a variety of selling situations involving a variety of sales personnel, who perform varied sales roles. Sales activities involve many different types of customer relationships—from simple transactional exchange to long-term, enduring customer relationships.

Consumers Customer demand Marketers typically begin planning with a detailed understanding of customer needs and wants. A need is something required for a healthy life (e.g. food, water, shelter, emotional bonding). A want is a desire, wish or aspiration; when needs or wants are backed by purchasing power, they have the potential to become demands.

Exchange Exchange, the act of giving or taking one thing of value in return for another, is central to marketing activities. Not all exchange involves financial transactions, but exchange may involve barter, contra dealing or other forms of trade. The object of exchange can include: goods, services or experiences, concepts or ideas, and causes, and may even involve celebrity marketing.

Perception of value

Traditional thinking around the concept of value was that marketers created value through innovation, product design and manufacture, and that utility was embedded in products or services offered for sale. In this type of thinking, a marketer's objective was to communicate a value proposition to potential buyers. However, recent thinking has changed the traditional perspective and now recognizes that consumers may participate in the co-creation of value in a variety of ways. Consumers may derive value through usage and experience, known as value-in-use or may be involved in product design, known as participatory design.

Economic concepts Given that marketing has its roots in economics, it shares many foundation concepts with the discipline. Most practicing marketers will have a working knowledge of basic economic concepts and theories.

Competitive and comparative advantages Businesses seek to compete by achieving competitive advantages or comparative advantages. Competitive advantages often focus on reducing costs through achieving one or more of the following: economies of scope, economies of scale, experience effects and first-mover advantages. Alternatively, a business may seek to develop uniqueness through product differentiation or developing unique competencies such as market sensing, rapid market response or delivering superior customer value.

Competition types Different types of competitive markets can be identified: duopoly, monopoly, monopolistic competition, imperfect competition, and oligopoly.

Demand Understanding demand and supply is essential for determining market size and market potential as well as in the price-setting function.

The basic mechanics of consumer demand include: demand curve, demand-led growth, demand response, law of demand, law of supply and transaction costs. Different types of demand functions include: derived demand and inverse demand function.

Economic systems In Western economies, the capitalist economy dominates. However, other types of economic systems such as barter economies and the sharing economy can be identified.

Markets Market Monopsony Oligopsony

Value Value-in-ownership Value-in-use Marketing ethics

Switching Switching costs Switching barriers

Planning

Planning levels Marketing planning is just one facet of the overall company's planning. Marketing plans must therefore take their guidance from the overall strategic plan or business plan. Most companies produce both a strategic plan and a managerial plan (also known as an operational plan). The distinction between strategic planning and management planning is that they are two phases with different goals.

Strategic planning is fundamentally concerned with the policies that will improve the firm's competitive position. Strategic planning is sometimes called higher-order planning and is usually long-term (say 3–7 years) while management planning is short-term and may be carried out for a specific program (e.g. a sales or advertising campaign of a few weeks duration) or carried out annually. Strategic plans typically include a statement of the firm's vision and mission. The marketing strategy is a plan that shows how the firm's marketing activities will help to achieve the overall strategic goals.

Marketing management or marketing mix (also known as the 4Ps) is focused on developing the marketing program and is concerned with the implementation of specific action plans designed to achieve objective, measurable targets (SMART objectives). Marketing management plans are typically prepared on an annual planning cycle, but may be prepared for shorter periods for special events such as a product launch, a new logo, change to corporate livery or a repositioning campaign.

Planning tools Strategic planning requires sophisticated research and analysis to document the firm's current situation as well as to identify opportunities with the potential to be developed.

Planning methods Strategic research is primarily concerned with the identification of new business opportunities and threats, which derive from the external operating environment. Accordingly, strategic analysts rely less on traditional market research methods. Instead, they use methods such as environmental scanning,Fahey, L., King, W. R. and Narayanan, V. K., "Environmental scanning and forecasting in strategic planning—The state of the art," Long Range Planning, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1981, pp. 32–39 marketing intelligence (also known as competitive intelligence)Fleisher, C. and Bensoussan, B. Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Methods & Techniques for Analyzing Business Competition, 2003; Fleisher, C. & Bensoussan, B., Business and Competitive Analysis: Effective Application of New and Classic Methods, 2007; Slater, S. F. and Narver, J. C., "Intelligence Generation and Superior Customer Value," Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 28, No. 1, 2000, pp. 120–128 and futures research.Berkhout, F. and Hertin, J., "Foresight futures scenarios: developing and applying a participative strategic planning tool," Greener Management International, Spring 2002, pp. 37+; Skumanich, M. and Silbernagel, M., "Background on Foresighting Methods," Ch. 2 in Foresighting Around the World, Battelle Seattle Research Centre, 1997, e-text, www.seattle.battelle.org

Analysis methods Marketers draw on a very wide variety of techniques and tools when analyzing the market and the broader operating conditions. The technique selected depends on the nature of the situation or problem to be investigated and the analyst's skill and experience. Strategic analysts employ some 200 different quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques including:Fleitcher, C. and Bensoussan, B., Strategic and Competitive Analysis: Methods and Techniques for Analyzing Business Competition, Prentice Hall, NJ Prentice Hall, 2002