Marketing or Quality - What’s more important to sell a product?

Marketing or Quality – What’s more important to sell a product?

Marketing has become the mantra for corporate houses looking to unleash new products and services on customers without doing their homework. Slick ads targeting users have come about in a bid to make up for quality with quantity and tons of it…at that. Vast number of print, media and audiovisual ads are used to channelize the buyer’s interests and capture his or her attention. But how far does slick marketing actually translate into record sales? Can marketing a product well cover up its flaws? Or is a product only as good as the promotional jingle supporting it? It is time to examine this matter from different angles and see whether it is marketing or the quality that is more important, and what really makes a product or service tick?

Marketing Helps Product Sales

1. You can sell flawed products with flawless ads : Marketing has become part of a consumer’s life and you see so many marketing schemes across various forms of media. They not only catch the customer’s attention, but sustain it as well. This ensures that products are only as important as the marketing campaign unleashed to promote them. After all, fairness creams promise the impossible and yet find buyers on the strength of picture perfect ads promising the moon.

2. Marketing introduces the product : Rather than quality, the calling card of any product has become its marketing tagline. Any product is only as good (or bad) as the strength and appeal of its marketing campaign

3. Promoting products through celebrities helps: Studies have shown that buyers will be more readily persuaded by well known figures and those they have a positive perception of. No wonder celebrity endorsements are on the rise. Marketing is the art of promoting products or services to prospects and potential customers.

4. Sans marketing, even the best products would remain unknown: Regardless of the quality of a product, if the marketing campaign is not in place, even the best products of the top most quality would remain unknown to consumers.

To make the customers try a new product and feel its quality, it is important to make him buy it one time. Promotions play an important role here!

5. Without marketing, sales is impossible : If you do not market a product, how will it sell? Without marketing, sales may fall and companies will have to face undeniable losses. Sales is only possible if people are aware of the product or service and its various features and advantages. Quality was never as important as the tone of the marketing product. Thousands of flawed products or services which have health risks find takers on the strength of marketing campaigns. Consider the destruction unleashed by caffeine high energy drinks, consuming several of which have been linked to death and destruction of brain cells. Yet, people are enamoured of such drinks and frequently resort to them for an energy boost on the strength of an attractive marketing campaign.

Quality is more important

1. Maintaining customer base is only possible with quality: Only if the product has a certain quality and meets certain standards and requirements will it attract buyers. To maintain steady consumer demand and a customer base, quality is the prime consideration. If your product or service is flawed in some way, no amount of marketing will help.

You can get one time sale with a promotion but repeat sales come only when the quality is good. Word of mouth can also have a negative impact, if the quality of your product is sub-standard.

2. Customer satisfaction is equated with quality : Customer satisfaction is only possible if the product or service is of a certain top quality. In the absence of quality control, a marketing campaign may attract customer attention, but it will not attain customer satisfaction.

3. Faulty goods have to be replaced : No matter how persuasive and interesting a marketing campaign is, quality goods speak for themselves. If a product or service is faulty, the customer is well within his or her rights to demand a compensation and this can cut into sales and harm business.

4. Without quality, marketing is hollow : Customers can take companies to consumer courts for making false promises in marketing campaigns. This can create a situation where marketing alone will not counter the needs or demands of the customer. In the absence of quality, marketing is just a hollow promise with no real meaning.

Conclusion

Celebrity endorsements are the flavour of the day. From sports persons to actors, everyone worth their salt is espousing some product or service to the public. How far these products actually meet the promises made in the marketing campaign remains questionable. Despite this, brisk sales and customer loyalty are the result of slick ad campaigns unleashed on the unsuspecting public. It is all very well to uphold the caveat that the buyer needs to be beware, but with so many clever marketing slogans and ads, does he or she stand a chance?

Quality should be the most important consideration for the success of any product or service. Unfortunately, marketing is the real standard by which product’s or service’s success or failure is determined.