Why Study Business Marketing?
Business marketing is an exciting area of study. Students may be more familiar with consumer marketing; after all, everyone is a consumer. Business marketing, however, is new to most students. It is not the same as consumer marketing, and there are several compelling reasons for studying business marketing.
Marketing Majors Begin in Business Marketing
Are you a marketing major? As you can see, more marketing majors find jobs with businesses that sell products or services to other businesses rather than with businesses that sell to consumers. For that reason alone, it seems worthwhile to study business marketing.
Indeed, the majority of business school graduates—whether in accounting, finance, logistics, management, production, real estate, or quantitative methods—will find themselves working at firms doing business with other organizations. Many companies have awakened to the fact that they must be market-driven if they are to survive. Being marketdriven means that customer satisfaction and operational efficiency are the order of the day for every department and individual employee or associate. Market-driven means that at many organizations, individuals with complementary expertise and skills work in teams to constantly strive to serve organizational customers better, to innovate, and to develop the means to approach new institutional markets.
Magnitude of Business Marketing
One reason that more marketing majors begin their careers in business marketing than in consumer marketing is because of the magnitude of business marketing. Purchases by organizations such as companies, government agencies, and institutions account for more than half of the economic activity in industrialized countries such as the United States, Canada, and France, making business marketing an important activity. As mentioned earlier, few consumers have the purchasing power of an organization. Understanding how organizations buy is important to marketers who want to capitalize on the size of the business market.
Business Marketing Is Unique
There would be no point in having a separate business marketing class if business marketing were the same as marketing to consumers. If one type of marketing fits all situations, then only one set of classes would be required. The way organizations buy is radically different from the way consumers purchase products and services, which results in different marketing requirements. Let’s examine some ways in which business marketing is unique.