Marketing Aquaculture Products — 1

• Off erings
• Brands
• Value & satisfaction
• Exchange
• Transactions
• Relationships & networks
• Marketing channels
• Th e supply chain
• Competition
• Th e marketing environment
• Marketing programs
Th ese terms make up the working vocabulary
of the marketing professional. Marketing’s key
processes are:
• Opportunity identifi cation
• New product development
• Customer attraction
• Customer retention & loyalty building
• Order fulfi llment
Kotler says, “A company that handles all of
these processes well will normally enjoy success.
But when a company fails at any one of
these processes, it will not survive.
“Marketing is too oft en confused with selling.
Selling is only the tip of the marketing iceberg.
What is unseen is the extensive market
investigation, the research and development of
appropriate products, the challenge of pricing
them right, of opening up distribution, and
8 — Marketing Aquaculture Products
of letting the market know about the product.
Th us, marketing is a far more comprehensive
process than selling.
“Marketing and selling are almost opposites.
Hard sell marketing is a contradiction. Long
ago I said: ‘Marketing is not the art of fi nding
clever ways to dispose of what you make. Marketing
is the art of creating genuine customer
value. It is the art of helping your customers
become better off .’ Th e marketer’s watchwords
are quality, service, and value.
“Selling starts only when you have a product.
Marketing starts before there is a product.
Marketing is the homework the company does
to fi gure out what people need and what the
company should make. Marketing determines
how to launch, price, distribute and promote
the product/service off ering in the marketplace.
Marketing then monitors the results and improves
the off ering over time. Marketing also
decides when to end the off ering.
“All said marketing is not a short-term selling
eff ort but a long-term investment eff ort. When
marketing is done well, it occurs before the
company makes any product or enters any market;
and it continues long aft er the sale.
“I published Lateral Marketing (with co-author
Fernando Trias De Bes, Wiley, 2003) which
off ers a creativity approach that diff ers from
using vertical marketing (i.e., segmentation) to
fi nding new ideas. Vertical marketing works
within a given market; lateral marketing
instead visualizes the product in a new context.
Many examples can be cited. Today we can buy
food at gas stations; we can do our banking in
a supermarket; we can get access to a computer
at cybercafés; we can take pictures with our
cell phone; we can chew medical gum to ingest
certain medicines in our body; we can eat
cereal in the form of a candy bar. I can’t believe
there aren’t opportunities. I can only believe
that some marketers lack the ability to see