No organization will be able to survive, if it fails to market what it wants to. In India a saying goes like this -' Bolne wale ki basi bhi bik jati hai, na bolne wale ki taja bhi nahi bikati' (those who make marketing efforts are able to find customers even for rotten ones and those who remain silent in their marketing effort are not able to find customers for the fresh ones).

This shows how important marketing is. Gone are the days of sellers market. In these days of buyers market only those marketers will survive who take care of their customers in every possible way.

Marketing has been continuously shifting its focus and goals keeping in view the changing marketing environment. First, marketing appeared as a branch of applied economics and was concerned with the study of channels of distribution. Then, it became a managerial discipline and was concerned with the increase in sales.

Then, it shifted to an applied behavioral science and is concerned with the understanding of buyers and sellers. Thus, it has travelled from commodity approach (me-too products) to institutional approach (manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, agents) to functional approach (exchanging, promoting, logistics, and pricing) to managerial approach (analysis, planning, organizing and controlling) to social focus.

Different people have given different concepts of marketing. American Marketing Association's definition in 1935 carried the traditional view emphasizing only one-way traffic, i.e., transfer of goods and services from producer to consumer, i.e., 'pushing products and services'. Profit maximisation is the sole objective and consumers are taken for granted.

The managerial perspective is concerned with the 'art of selling', but selling is only the tip of marketing in its totality. The current perspective as given in their 2004 version is concerned with 'knowing and understanding the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself, i.e., engaging in customer service engineering.

It is against profit maximization at the cost of stakeholders consumers, uses marketing as a means for social welfare. In fact consumer is the purpose of marketing. In the new concept of marketing, the orientation has changed from production to marketing, product to customer, and supply to demand, sales to satisfaction and internal to external