During WWII world industry geared up for accelerated wartime production. When the war was over this stimulated industrial machine turned to producing consumer products. By the mid 50’s supply was starting to out-pace demand in many industries. Businesses had to concentrate on ways of selling their products. Numerous sales techniques such as closing, probing, and qualifing were all developed during this period and the sales de-partment had an exalted position in a company’s organizational structure.
The Selling Concept proposes that customers, be individual or organizations will not buy enough of the organization’s products unless they are persuaded to do so through selling effort. So organizations should undertake selling and promotion of their products for marketing success. The consumers typically are inert and they need to be goaded for buying by converting their inert need in to a buying motive through persuasion and selling action.
This approach is applicable in the cases of unsought goods like life insurance, vacuum cleaner, fire fighting equipments including fire extinguishers. These industries are seen having a strong network of sales force. This concept is applicable for the firms having over capacity in which their goal is to sell what they produce than what the customer really wants.
In a modern marketing situation the buyer has a basket to choose from and the customer is also fed with a high decibel of advertising. So often there is a misconception that marketing is all about selling. The problem with this approach is that the customer will certainly buy the product after the persuasion and if dissatisfied will not speak to others. In reality this does not happen and companies pursuing this concept often fail in the business.
Also read – Company orientation towards the marketplace
Can i ask what are the companies guided by these selling concept?
Not many as on date. In fact, only some small and medium sized businesses will be using the selling concept nowadays that too in under developed or developing nations. In the A type society, the selling concept does not work. And hence it was replaced by the marketing concept.
Thank you for article
THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP….
help me what is difference between marketing theory and societal theory also the reason why company adopting one or more marketing orientation?
I would kindly request you to read the articles on Marketing concept and Societal marketing concept. Both are on the site. It depends on the company and their management or leadership which orientation it chooses. A company like Tata does a lot of social work. Same goes for Coca cola or Pepsi. So if you see, the top companies prefer giving back to society whereas the upcoming companies are too busy making it click to concentrate more on such CSR activities. So they focus more on their marketing and not on the society.
This has been helpful thank you so much! I have a marketing exam in June, and I think that my only problem is my english, I feel that I have limited vocabulary sometimes and fail to use or remember marketing terms as to make essay more appealing. I’m doing my best and reading books and writing short notes on every topic. Would you kindly give me some tips as how to improve? Thank you for your patience it’s greatly appreciated!
In your place i would find out and read as many case studies as possible. The reason you probably dont remember marketing jargon is because there is no place to apply it. We cant remember the complete English dictionary. But when we start reading novels, our language gets better. So like novels, case studies are narratives of actual brands and marketing decisions taken in the real world. This will improve your marketing manifold.
thank you very much this information has been of help
interrogate value and cost based pricing strategies model with marketing philosophies