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Marketing methods are informed by many of the social sciences, particularly psychology, sociology, and economics. Marketing research underpins these activities. Through advertising, it is also related to many of the creative arts. Successful marketers typically have a customer orientation or focus.

1 Overview

In popular usage, the term "marketing" refers to the promotion of products, especially advertising and branding. However, in professional usage the term has a wider meaning. It can be divided into four sections, often called the "four Ps," only one of which is promotion. They are:

• Product - The Product management aspect of marketing deals with the specifications of the actual good or service, and how it relates to the end-user's needs and wants.
• PricingPricing is one of the four aspects of marketing. The other three parts of the marketing mix are product management, promotion, and distribution. It is also a key variable in microeconomic price allocation theory. Pricing involves asking questions like: Ho - This refers to the process of setting a priceFor people whose family name is Price see Price (disambiguation). In economics and business, the price is the assigned numerical monetary value of a good, service or asset. The concept of price is central to microeconomics where it is one of the most impo for a product, including discounts.
• PromotionPromotion is one of the four aspects of marketing. The other three parts of the marketing mix are product management, pricing, and distribution. Promotion involves disseminating information about a product, product line, brand, or company. It is comprised - This includes advertising, sales promotionIn marketing, sales promotion is one of the four aspects of promotion. The other three parts of the promotional mix are advertising, personal selling, and publicity/ public relations. Sales promotions are non-personal promotional efforts that are designed, publicityPublicity is one of the variables that comprise the promotional mix. The other components of promotions are advertising, sales promotion, and personal selling. Promotion is one of the variables that comprise the marketing mix. The other three are product, and personal sellingSales or the activity of selling forms an integral part of commercial activity. As a practical implementation of marketing, it often forms a separate grouping in a corporate structure, employing separate specialist operatives known as salesmen (singular:, and refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.
• Place or distribution refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point of sale placement or retailing.

These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix. A marketer will use these variables to craft a marketing plan. For a marketing plan to be successful, the mix of the four "p's" must reflect the wants and desires of the consumers in the target market. Trying to convince a market segment to buy something they don't want is extremely expensive and seldom successful. Marketers depend on marketing research to determine what consumers want and what they are willing to pay for. Marketers hope that this process will give them a sustainable competitive advantage. Marketing management is the practical application of this process.

Some aspects of marketing, especially promotion, are the subject of criticisms.

See List of marketing topics for a list of the 200 marketing articles on Wikipedia.