Question

What is the role of marketing in a commercial organisation? Explain with reference to Indian economy.

Answer 1

Marketing is said to be the eye and ear of business because it keeps a business enterprise in touch with the changing needs and preferences of consumers. Marketing is essential for the survival and growth of business. The business aims at profits. To realise profits, a sale has to be made. To make a sale, a customer has to be created. Creating and satisfying customers is the job of marketing. Marketing is the nerve centre of all business activities and the beating heart of business organisation. It contributes to the economic and social development of a nation in the following ways:

1. A nation's income comprises goods and services that money can buy. Any increase in marketing efficiency reduces the cost of distribution and lowers consumer prices, which in turn improves people's real income.
2. Marketing contributes to national income and wealth. Business firms create and sell new products and services to satisfy human wants. To do so, they productively use the country's latent resources. Fuller exploitation of national resources generates income and wealth. Marketing in developed countries is more advanced than in developing countries. Marketing also helps to increase a nation's exports and foreign exchange earnings.
3. Marketing generates employment. Many people are gainfully employed in the distribution and marketing of products and services. In addition, marketing increases production and trade volumes.
4. Marketing helps to improve people's standard of living. By increasing per capita income and bringing new and better products and services to consumers, marketing raises the quality of life in society. It is marketing that has converted "yesterday's luxuries into today's necessities."
5. In a developing country like India, marketing is all the more important. It helps to make fuller utilisation of untapped assets and energies. Marketing contributes to the development of entrepreneurial and managerial talent. Development of marketing leads to the integration of agriculture, industry and other sectors of the economy.
6. Marketing enables the government and non-government organisations to eliminate social evils like insanitation, illiteracy, drinking, gambling, the dowry system, racism, etc. It is through social marketing that family planning, pollution control, AIDS awareness and other socially useful programmes have achieved a reasonable degree of success.