Importance Of Marketing In The 20th Century

Marketing has been in existence for decades. According to etymologists, the term marketing first appeared in dictionaries in the sixteenth century where it referred to the process of buying and selling in a market. However, it is now described as, “the science and art of exploring, creating and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit. It focuses on identifying unfulfilled needs and desire (Kotler).

The last few decades have seen marketing evolve from one form into anther with some bearing traits of prior years and others introducing completely new and sometimes very daring concepts. One undisputable fact however is that marketing now plays one of the most important, if not the most important role in the functions

The philosophy ruling this era was, “if you build it, they will come”. This approach saw very little or no attention being given to the (potential) customer’s desires, wants or level of income. This can be attributed to the fact that there were only a few alternative products available so customers really did not have much of a choice. As shown by Henry Ford’s famous declaration that customers could own a car in any colour as long as it was black, manufacturers were more focused on strict standardization to enable them achieve economies of scale and subsequently keep production costs at a minimum. This put customers in the position of being restricted to what was available on the market regardless their personal tastes and

It was here that digital marketing first emerged and brought marketing onboard the commercial use of the internet. However it took more than one decade for the internet to become the main platform for Marketing.

The introduction of the internet revolutionized marketing in a way that greatly influenced Marketing as we see it now. The main players in this period were Amazon (1994), eBay (1995) and Google (1997). However Yahoo was only one of the few companies to turn online marketing profitable and helped paved the way for other companies. Shortly after Yahoo’s success in online marketing many other companies such as HotBot, LookSmart and MSN joined the bandwagon. The birth of Google however has gone down in history as being a particularly pivotal moment in the history of search engines and digital marketing especially.

In the twenty-first century, Marketing has been simply grouped into two sections, The Inbound Marketer and The Outbound Marketer. Inbound Marketers embrace the use of technology. They basically rely on earning the interest of customers’ concerning a product rather than imposing it on them. With the Outbound Marketers however, they focus on techniques that push products or services on customers. Obviously, inbound marketers are a lot more successful than their outbound