Final answer:
After marketers select a target market, they focus on marketing strategies built around four variables known as the marketing mix: product, place, promotion, and price. The marketing orientation emphasizes satisfying customer needs and wants, and is associated with the marketing concept. Many companies today focus on building long-term, value-added associations with customers and suppliers.
Step-by-step explanation:
After marketers select a target market, they direct their company's activities toward marketing strategies built around four variables, often referred to as the marketing mix. The variable of product may involve decisions about customer service, package design, brand names, and trademarks, patents, and warranties. The variable of place may include decisions involving modes of transportation, warehousing, inventory control, order processing, and selection of marketing channels. The variable of promotion is broadly defined as communications to a firm's buyers about their products.
Companies who follow a production orientation reached its peak in the 1950s when product shortages and intense consumer demand ruled the day. Somewhat similarly, companies who follow a sales orientation emphasize the efficient manufacturing of quality products and then look for people to purchase them. Both of these orientations were largely replaced by the marketing orientation, which favors a focus on satisfying the needs and wants of consumers. This orientation is associated with belief in the marketing concept, a companywide customer orientation, which maintains that all facets of an organization must contribute first to assessing and then satisfying customer needs and wants. Today many companies take this customer orientation further, focusing on building long-term, value-added associations and connections over time with customers and suppliers. This describes the societal marketing concept of marketing.