Nono, Lharry E.

BSMA 1-1

Marketing shapes consumer needs and wants

In the corporate world, historically, marketing is often described as advertising and selling
marketing offers to the market. People merely identifies market as a place, however, it is not
limited to that ideology. Market refers to set of buyers – actual and potential. Marketing has
various objectives and goals. Marketing’s primary objective is to continuously satisfy the needs
and wants of the consumers in exchange of profit. Marketing is a process. Marketers do not just
sell and advertise. It requires proper segmentation, identifying the target market and effective
and efficient positioning. According to Sinan A, ”We must know that marketing concept is the
philosophy that firms should analyse the needs of their customers and then make decisions to
satisfy those needs, better than the competition.” (Sinan A, et. al. 2015).

In this dynamic and ever changing world of business, it is not only the firm that is developing
but also the consumer’s needs and wants. Our wants today can be our needs tomorrow. Human
wants and needs are so complex that marketing needs to meet. Humans are not easily contented
with the things that they have. They tend to demand a lot. In my opinion, marketing does not
only reflect the consumer needs and wants but I strongly believe that it shapes their needs and
wants.

As we advance to a much modernized generation, marketing ideas have also become more
progressive compared to ancient ages. At this point, the rapid development of technology
became a widely-used tool for advertisement and selling of products, goods as well as services.
On that note, marketing shapes the consumers’ needs and wants by generating new ideas of
products and then producing and offering these products to consumers. Normally, these products
are those newly created and never been seen and/or heard of by the consumers. These new
products does not necessarily equates as consumers’ wants or needs but as an offer to them. For
example, with the help of good advertisements and promotions such as discounts and sales, as a
result, buyers have the possibility to unconsciously purchase these products. In that case, it
proves that marketing will try every possible tactics and techniques they know and capable of.
They will make the customers believe that they need a specific marketing offer even though they
really don’t. Therefore, marketing shapes the consumer needs and wants.

Marketing must also consider the different factors that affect the consumers buying behaviour
and power such as geographical, personal and demographic. Another example with these factors
being stated is the taste of the consumer. People from the west are fond of eating fast foods like
pizzas and burgers, however, consumers from Asia are more on rice. This shows that marketing
merely reflect the consumer needs and wants but in order for the marketers to shape the
consumers needs and wants, they should think of something related to fast food and rice that
people there have not tasted yet. Furthermore, they can also introduce something new to them
that could be their wants or needs as time passes by. One more example is, for indigenous people
who are away from cities and does not have enough access to internet, marketers will likely to
introduce technology to them since it could make them communicate with each other efficiently.
These factors shows how different human wants and needs are depending on the way they live.

To sum everything up, I strongly agree that marketing shapes consumer needs and wants. We
are all different. We have our own needs and wants that marketing must meet to earn profit.
Marketers attract people to buy their products. Marketing continuously creates and provides the
endless needs of human. With proper communication, marketing gives its best to determine our
needs and wants and provides the best quality of marketing offers to satisfy us. Marketing
performs its full potential for us to buy their offers.

References:

Sinan, A (2015) Does marketing create or satisfy needs?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/does-marketing-create-satisfy-needs-sinan-al-jewari