Chapter 1: Heritage Marketing An Introduction

A definition of marketing

Marketing is the management function that is involved in identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements, profitably.

(Chartered Institute of Marketing, UK)

Marketing is therefore concerned to identify suitable target markets or audiences for a product or service (which may be developed or enhanced, once the needs of the market have been understood) by using the process of market segmentation (this is explored in detail in Chapter 3).

The principle of anticipation comes from economics and states that demand is always in anticipation of supply ; this means that, to a certain extent, one cannot know whether the product or service will be successful until it has been consumed (or perhaps enquiries made about it, orders taken, reservations made and so on). There is therefore an element of risk in presenting something to the marketplace.

Satisfying the market can take on many different forms and may be known by other marketing terms (such as adding value ) and is part of the targeting process through the appropriate use of marketing communications. This principle has been extended in recent years by aligning it to other disciplines such as information technology and creating new concepts such as customer relationship marketing; this will be explored later in the book. However, recent literature on marketing suggests that a new paradigm is now largely guiding thinking on practice and this is branding, a topic that will be covered in this book.

The only part of this definition that some concerned with marketing a heritage...