Abstract:

Research in marketing has a starting point in problems of business management. As in every organism the most important problems arise from interactions between that organism and its surroundings. A business is usually started to perform tasks that have been self-imposed, but it has to accept several social and economic limitations. These limitations concern both the targets one can hope to achieve as well as the ways along which they can be reached. Hence there is a problem of adaptation to outside conditions. It is also recognized that adaptation is necessary when a company sets objectives in terms of market shares and/or profits, the real problem being to choose between the efforts to introduce something new or to follow certain trends. This thought must come to the mind when according to the mystique of the economics of scarcity someone says that he wants to meet the demand. In a quantitative sense this may apply in a developed society but here the problem of a manufacturer is more to find acceptance for a certain supply, since in essence he is anticipating a demand that has been made possible by a technical development to which he has contributed.