1. Sales Concept
The sales concept (Selling Concept) appeared after the product concept. It was once pursued by many business operators and is still adopted by a considerable number of companies, especially those corporate organizations that cannot correctly distinguish between marketing and sales.
The sales concept believes that if consumers are not influenced, they will not buy enough of a company’s products. Therefore, through active promotion and sales, customers’ purchases can be increased. It is undeniable that in the modern market economy, in the face of insufficient market demand or fierce competition due to product oversupply, sales can still play a corresponding role. That is, at this time, companies need to do more persuasion work on consumers and convey more favorable information about products and services to the market. However, any sales method and measure cannot sell products that cannot meet the needs and desires of consumers or customers, that is, “the greatest salesman in the world cannot sell products that customers do not need.”
2. Marketing Concept
The emergence of the marketing concept is revolutionary for the above concepts. Its core ideas and principles were not basically finalized until the mid-1950s.
The marketing concept believes that the key to achieving the goals of an enterprise organization lies in correctly determining the needs and desires of the target market and delivering what the target market expects to satisfy more effectively and powerfully than competitors.
The customer viewpoint and the competition viewpoint are the core ideas of the marketing concept. The customer viewpoint shows that the enterprise must first start from satisfying the needs of customers, that is, from the requirements of customers; the competition viewpoint shows that everything the enterprise does for the target market needs to be compared with competitors in the same market range at all times. Only when customers believe that the products and services provided by an enterprise are better than those of competitors, can the enterprise reach a deal with these customers.
3. Social marketing concept
Some people believe that the marketing concept mainly emphasizes satisfying the needs of individual consumers, so it may have a tendency to ignore the interests of other consumers and the overall interests of society. They believe that enterprises that act according to the marketing concept find it difficult to meet the needs of individual consumers while taking into account the interests of other consumers and social interests: when satisfying the current interests of consumers, it may damage the long-term interests of human society. In other words, the correct concept should strike a balance between corporate profits, consumer needs and social interests. Therefore, concepts such as “humanitarian marketing”, “green marketing” and “sustainable marketing” are proposed, which can be collectively referred to as social marketing concepts.
The social marketing concept believes that the task of an organization is to determine the needs, desires and interests of target markets and to provide the target markets with what they expect more effectively than competitors in a way that protects or improves consumers and social welfare.