Over the years marketers have been presented with a series of philosopical approaches to marketing decision making. One widely used approach is the marketing concept approach, which directs the marketer to develop the product offering, and endeed the entire marketing program, to meet the needs of the customer base. A key element in this approach the need of information flow from market to decision marker. Another approach is the system approach, which intructs the marketer to view the product not as an individual entity but as just one aspect of the customer's total need-satisfaction system. A third approach, the environmental approach, potrays the marketing decision maker as the focal point of numerous environments within which the firm operates and that affect the success of the firm's marketing program. These environments frequently bear such labels as legal-political, economic, competitive, consumer, market structure, social, technological, and international. .... (931 pages)
