Production Pressures
Mass production industries are impelledby a great drive to produce all they can.The prospect of steeply declining unit
costs as output rises is more than mostcompanies can usually resist. The profitpossibilities look spectacular. All effort
focuses on production. The result is that marketing gets neglected.John Kenneth Galbraith contends that just the opposite occurs." Output is soprodigious that all effort concentrateson trying to get rid of it. He says this accounts for singing commercials, the desmarketing on the needs of the buyer.Selling is preoccupied with the seller'sneed to convert the product into cash,marketing with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering, and, finally, consuming it. In some industries, the enticements of
full mass production have been so powerful that top management in effect has told the sales department, "You get ridof it; we'll worry about profits." By contrast, a truly marketing-minded firm tries to create value-satisfying goods and services that consumers will want to buy.What it offers for sale includes not onlythe generic product or service but also
how it is made available to the customer, in what form, when, under whatconditions, and at what terms of trade. Most important, what it offers for saleis determined not by the seller but by the buyer. The seller takes cues from the
buyer in such a way that the product becomes a consequence of the marketingeffort, not vice versa.
A Lag in Detroit. This may soundlike an elementary rule of business, but that does not keep it from being violated wholesale. It is certainly more violated than honored. Take the automobile industry.
Here mass production is most famous,most honored, and has the greatest