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17-8 Principles of Marketing [CH 17

Marketers collect and analyze market information to determine what will sell and
who will buy it. Marketers are concerned with the buyer behavior and consumer
patterns. Organizations that focus on discovering consumer needs and then

developing goods and services to fill those needs have adopted a managerial
approach referred to as the marketing concept.
When you are searching the internet for various products, the web site you select
will place on your computer “cookies” which identify to the marketeer what you

were looking at, and may have an interest in. Then that same marketeer will put
advertisements in your other online searches to remind you of your interest and
possibly encourage you to make a purchase.

The Marketing Concept

When people engage in marketing activities, they have consumer needs and
desires clearly in mind. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century
and the evolved ability to mass produce products, business emphasized production.

New manufactured goods were such a novelty, demand was present, and managers
concerned themselves with increased production and efficiencies rather than
consumer preferences. During this period marketing concerned itself with taking
orders and shipping goods.

Aaron Montgomery Ward founded Montgomery Ward in 1872 as a retail
business in Chicago, Illinois. Ward had conceived of the idea of a dry goods mail-
order business after several years of working as a traveling salesman among rural
customers. He observed that rural customers often wanted "city" goods, but their

only access to those goods was through rural retailers who had little competition and
did not offer any guarantee of quality. Ward understood that by eliminating
intermediaries, he could cut costs and make a wide variety of goods available to rural
customers, who could purchase goods by mail and pick them up at the nearest train

station. Customers were also inspired by his innovative company policy of
"satisfaction guaranteed or your money back", which Ward began in 1875. In 1883,
the company's catalog, which became popularly known as the "Wish Book", had
grown to 240 pages and 10,000 items. In 1896, Wards encountered its first serious

competition in the mail order business, when Richard Warren Sears introduced his
first general catalog. In 1900, Wards had total sales of $8.7 million, compared to $10
million for Sears, and both companies struggled for dominance during much of the
20th century. By 1904, Wards had expanded such that it mailed three million

catalogs, weighing 4 lb (1.8 kg) each, to customers. The Sears catalog department
produced several different catalogs which included a General Catalog for the several
shopping departments that could be found in the retail stores; they also produce a
Farm and Ranch catalog, that included fencing, poultry, bees, bee hives, cattle

chutes, watering and feed troughs, tractors and various tools; a Home catalog with all
of the items to furnish a home including furniture, refrigerators, stoves, microwaves,
dishes and china, and a variety of flatware. Sears produced a catalog for Men and one
for Women, and at their Christmas catalog to encourage parents and children alike.

One of their unique catalogs was their Animal catalog. This catalog included dogs
and cats by breed, horses, pigs, cows, rabbits, and chickens; uniquely this catalog
also included African game such as the Giraffe, Cape Buffalo, and any variety of
African Antelope, fowl and reptiles. Sears once had the motto “Sears has everything”

which they diligently tried to master. Those who worked for Sears say that this motto
was discarded when it could no longer provide Whale-bone corset stays for women’s
corsets because whales were no longer harvested.
This same marketing model is currently used by Wards, Sears, and Amazon,

Cabela’s, WalMart, Midway USA and any number of retailers, through the newer
process of e-commerce with a change of no longer producing a print catalog but
using the internet as the presentation page. The advantage is that these companies
can now create a catalog page where merchandise is segregated and combined with

like items and the cost of printing paper is eliminated. The graphic arts department
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