It is generally accepted that successful business is impossible without a good marketing management practices. You are therefore required to:

1. Explain the concept of marketing management

2. Explain the relational controlling marketing management in Nigeria

3. How the application of good marketing management practice can enhance the quality of life in the university community.

INTRODUCTION:

Marketing is the process by which a firm or persons doing business communicate the value of its products and services to consumers. The primary challenge is to choose which consumers to communicate with and the best strategy for reaching them with your message.

Marketing Management

Marketing management is the process of planning, organizing, directing and controlling the activities relating to the marketing of goods and services to satisfy the customers wants.

MARKETING MANAGEMENT CONCEPT

The importance of marketing has been widened through many evolutionary processes and shaped as consumer-orientation stage, in which the existence of a firm is measured of its ability to satisfy the consumers. A producer or firm can serve its share-holders, management and workers, when the firm is successful in its marketing.

The achievements of marketing objectives are two-fold -customer satisfaction and profitable. Customer satisfaction is gained, and it greatly depends upon the manner in which the marketing functions are organized.

The modern concept of marketing management emphasizes customer satisfaction rather than maximization of sales. The customer is always right’ is a view that has been cited ever since the Industrial Revolution.

There are five concepts under which organizations conduct their marketing activities: the production, product, selling, marketing, and societal marketing.

The production concepts holds that consumers will favor products that are available and highly affordable. In this sense, management should focus on improving production and distribution efficiency. For example, Henry Ford's whole philosophy was to perfect the production of the Model T so that its cost could be reduced and more people could afford it.

The product concept holds that consumers will favor products that offer the most in quality, performance, and innovative features. Thus, an organization should devote energy to making continuous product improvements.

The selling concept holds that consumers will not buy enough of the organization's products unless it undertakes a large-scale selling and promotion effort. Most firms practice the selling concept when they have over capacity. Their aim is to sell what they make rather than make what the market wants.

Such marketing carries high risks.

The marketing concept holds that achieving organizational goals depends on determining the needs and wants of target market and delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors do.

The societal marketing concept holds that the organization should determine the needs, wants, and interests of target markets. It should then deliver superior value to customers in a way that maintain or improves the consumer's and the society's well being. The societal marketing concepts asks if the firm that senses, serves, and satisfies individual wants is always doing what's best for consumers and society in the long run. It find out that the pure marketing concept over looks possible conflicts between consumer short run wants and consumer long run welfare.

Characteristics of Marketing Manager

The important Characteristics of marketing management are as follow:

a. Marketing is a specialized business function: In the early days, the selling function did not call for any specialized skills as the sales could have been effected on production-basis. But as present, the business environment has undergone tremendous changes in social, economic, political and cultural aspects. The management of a firm, therefore, has to develop a particular organization with a view to absorbing new ideas, new approaches and new market demands.

b. Marketing is a social function: it requires constant interaction with various strata of society. It is instrumental in manipulating the factors of production. Distribution, promotion and price, and also in influencing the patterns of consumption and consumer attitudes.

c. Marketing is an integrative function: It integrates and combines the other business functions like production, finance, personnel etc. with a view to accomplishing the organizational objectives.

d. Marketing reflects the business mission of a firm before the public and society

e. Marketing is a management function: like the management of other functions such as production, finance, personnel etc.. the business policies, strategies and programmes related to marketing are mostly managerial functions. These are needed to be planned, organized, directed coordinated and controlled so as to achieve the marketing objectives.

f. Marketing is a universal function: It has a universality in the sense that it can be applied to both profit-motive and non-profit motive organizations.

The study of marketing management is nothing but the critical evaluation of various marketing functions. The functions necessary to determine consumer wants and needs and to supply necessary goods and services to meet those demands can broadly classified as follows:

(1) Marketing Research (2) Product Planning Development (3) Standardization and Grading (4) Product Pricing (5) Packaging (6) Advertising and Sales Promotion (7) Distribution Management (8) Management of Sales Forces etc.

RELATIONAL CONTROLLING MARKETING MANAGEMENT IN NIGERIA

The rational controlling marketing management in Nigeria is as a result of individuals and companies within the society becoming more specialized in the economic activities. They come to rely upon others to supply at least some of the products and services which they need.

Thus begins a process of exchange between buyers and sellers. For a while buyers and sellers remain in immediate contact and each party is able to determine what the other needs and values and, therefore, will be willing to exchange. As the economy develops the number and types of exchanges expand, there is a concomitant need for increasingly specialized marketing services such as physical distribution, storage, grading, and market information gathering. The number of participants also increases with many of the specialized services being provided by intermediaries between the seller and ultimate buyer.

Economic development itself provides the impulse towards more sophisticated and more efficient marketing systems. As countries experience economic growth, their rate of urbanization tends to increase substantially.

Another development which has in recent times explains the rational controlling the marketing management in Nigeria is the trend in many developing countries, towards market liberalization as part of economic structural adjustment programmes (ESAPs). The view that direct and indirect government participation in production and distribution had brought about structural distortions in economies has become widely accepted.

Social marketing should also be acknowledged as one of the rational controlling the marketing Management in Nigeria. Social marketing identifies human needs in non-competitive economies and/or sectors of society and defines the means of delivering products and services to meet these needs. The marketing mix of social marketing strategies is evaluated using quite different criteria from those employed in assessing purely commercial marketing strategies. Criteria such as the percentage of the target population reached with the technology, products, processes or services, quantities produced and distributed and uptake of the product, service or technology are more often employed.

HOW THE APPLICATION OF GOOD MARKETING MANAGEMENT PRACTICE CAN ENHANCE THE QUALITY OF LIFE IN THE UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY.

Marketing management practice enhances students’ creativity and makes them analytical marketers armed with the skills and experience to succeed.

It equips students with current and emerging theories that inform or comment upon the practices of marketing. The course endeavours to provide a stimulating and intellectually demanding environment, in which they are encouraged to engage with the academic literature, case studies and whilst reflecting on marketing issues within national and international context.

Marketing Management practice will enable students to develop an interdisciplinary, theoretically informed and practical understanding of marketing to enable them to become an effective and successful.