School of Management Studies, MIMT.
The marketing concept assumes that the organizations aim for mutually satisfying exchanges between buyers and sellers that result in positive outcomes for the consumer and/or the organization. Consequently, organizations adopt a customer-oriented perspective as a source of competitive advantage with success dependent on the determination of needs and wants of target markets and the delivery of satisfactions to those markets more effectively and efficiently than competitors. Accordingly, the customer becomes the focal point for all organizational planning, strategy setting, research, product development and marketing activities, with the marketing mix representing the primary vehicle for managing the successful relationship between the customer and the firm as a means to increase profits (Kotler 1998).
The dilemma and challenge for organization in today's marketing environment is to not only produce projects and benefits of their shareholders, but also to manage their benefits of their affairs in such a way that, at least, they are not detrimental to society. Those issues have been always examined as part of the corporate social responsibility (Abratt and sack, 1988).
Thus, while firms have focused on the financial benefit to the organization (i.e. project, competitive advantage) they have not fully identified the benefits or costs to all those informed in the wider exchange process. As such, firms still appear to consider the marketing concept and even the societal marketing concept to fall within a narrow transactional marketing approach, that is, between the firm and the consumer (Gronroos 1991).
