We also will spend a short time on the history of marketing and see how it has evolved from a process centered on simply getting as many people as possible to purchase a product to today’s highly complex efforts designed to build long term customer relationships.
Note that in this tutorial we use the terms “marketing research” and “market research” interchangeably. Many feel there is a distinct difference, with “marketing research” covering a broader array of research efforts associated with marketing decisions while “market research” is specific to understanding nuances of a particular market. For the purpose of this tutorial we treat these as the same.
In general terms, a customer is a person or organization that a marketer believes will benefit from the goods and services offered by the marketer’s organization. As this definition suggests, a customer is not necessarily someone who is currently purchasing from the marketer. In fact, customers may fall into one of three customer groups.