ABSTRACT
Marketing is a complex activity, which has increased in importance in the second half of the twentieth century. It seeks to understand consumer needs and meet them by a general supervision of production, distribution and selling activities. To some extent it is a logical development made necessary by the mass production of goods which has reached such perfection in this century. If the difficulties of production have been overcome to such an extent that there need never again be any shortage of goods, it follows that the marketing side of business activity must grow to ensure that this vast quantity of resources reaches those who require them, the consumers seeking to satisfy their wants. That some of the problems of ensuring world-wide consumer satisfaction are in fact political and depend upon the management of prosperity around the world cannot be denied, but marketing cannot go as far as that. What marketing tries to do is ensure that the whole organisation of a firm or company is pulling together to:
produce the things that people really do want;
package them as attractively as possible;
bridge the gaps between producers and consumers as efficiently as possible, which means bridging the time gap by adequate protection and preservation of the product, and bridging the geographical gap by sound physical distribution arrangements;
finally sell the products, at prices which yield a profit, by an efficient wholesaling and retailing system.
