HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF MARKETING - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2026

The historical antecedents of marketing, whose main function is to promote and facilitate the exchange between two entities, goes back to the messages found in cave paintings in the Stone Age.

The evolution of marketing is associated with the idea of ​​how products were tried to be presented to be bought by consumers, and it emerged as a discipline when the Second World War ended.

The effort to develop persuasive communications to sell goods and services appeared in ancient civilizations, such as those of China and India.

Although they were not known as marketing in those days, they were a clear example of business and marketing.

Evolution of Marketing: From the Industrial Revolution to Today

The objective of commercial exchange, the main purpose of marketing, is to know what to produce, what is the best way to offer it and how to get it to consumers.

From this, different stages can be distinguished within the history of marketing: the era of simple commerce, the era of production and sales, and the era of marketing orientation.

Era of simple commerce

The products were made manually and were available in small quantities. The distribution of the goods was limited.

Era of production and sales

Mass production created many industries dedicated to the same task to meet the needs of a growing consumer market. The infrastructure for transportation and the media were strengthened.

It created the need for producers to find better ways to develop the products that customers needed, and a more sophisticated approach to informing them about these products.

With the end of World War II, the objective of marketing was to sell, through communications and advertisements, the objects that companies produced.

This resulted in increased competition between companies and price became the true competitive advantage.

Marketing orientation era

The marketing orientation stage extends from 1940 to 1960 and is the time of the great awakening in business. Consumers acquire greater power in the market.

The companies organized the activities related to marketing in a single department, which responded to the needs of advertising, sales, promotions and public relations.

In marketing orientation, which began in the 1960s, all the efforts of marketers are specifically focused on responding to customer needs.

The customer is king. Marketing managers begin to develop strategic plans for imposing the products, and their job is to determine the costs of their products and the most appropriate means of dissemination to inform customers.

Currently we can speak of an era of relationship marketing, in which the objective of marketing is to build a long-term relationship with the customer.

The objective is the loyalty of the users through the construction of the brand concept, and this is possible because brands generate trust.

In this new stage, both companies and users are connected twenty-four hours, every day of the week, through the Internet and mobile devices.

References

1. Steven White, “The evolution of marketing”, 2010. Retrieved on December 11, 2017 from dstevenwhite.com
2. The evolution of marketing: a brief history, 2016. Retrieved on December 11, 2017 from agencysparks.com
3. Foundation Degree South West, “A brief history of marketing”, 2016. Retrieved on December 11, 2017 from media3.bournemouth.ac.uk
4. Suzanne Joel, “Life, the universe and marketing”, 2017. Retrieved on December 11, 2017 from synup.com