Marketing

Introduction

Kotler & Keller (2009) defined ‘marketing’ as recognising the needs and at the same time meeting these needs of the consumer and society as a whole. They (2009) added that marketing can also be defined as ‘meeting needs profitably’ (Kotler & Keller 2009, p.45). Like the definition of consumption, marketing’s roles differ from the point of view of different group of stakeholder and it changes as the external environment change.

Discussion and literature

From the definition discussed above, we can interpret ‘consumption’ as an ‘activity’ that is initiated by a person, or what we called a ‘consumer’.

Consumptions in the developed countries:

Diamond (2008) stated that out of the estimated 6.5 billion living in this world, the population of the developed countries accounted for 1 billion. He (2008) added that the average rate of the consumptions (it includes the consumption of goods and production of waste) in the developed countries is 32 times higher than the developing countries.

This prompted the question, if there were still a need to encourage consumption in the developed countries? There is no definite answer and subject to debate. However, it is worthwhile to note that if we take consumption as a fundamental daily ‘activity’ those consumers do every day, we can conclude that we can’t stop consumption in the first place. Secondly, if we were not able to stop consumption, will an economy in a country grow as a whole without an increase in consumption? It is vital to note that the economy cycle of a country depend on factors such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employment and etc. For an economy of a country to grow and prosper, consumption is one of the major inputs.

Lazer (1969) implied that consumption usually invoke a fake reflection when it was associated with constant scarcity. He (2009) believed that as the society progress, especially {text:soft-page-break} the consumers in developed economy, the needs and wants moves...