Marketing =sales???

(About my experience)

In my company, the advertising department is responsibility for marketing.

The advertising department consists of two offices: sales promotion office and corporate branding office.

I had some chances to discuss how to promote corporate marketing in our company as a cross-functional team member. It was very important to promote marketing in my company, however our member (including me) didn’t understand the meaning of marketing well.

As the concept of marketing is wide, some co-workers in the sales department oversimplified the marketing. 

They thought and still believe that “Marketing is sales!”

(About Taobao)

It would seem that Taobao is not so famous in Japan. I didn’t know Taobao well, so I have never accessed Taobao’s site before. As we learned the case of Taobao, Taobao grasped new business opportunities by defeating biggest competitor, eBay.

eBay had a highest share, but eBay had some bad services (such as “no shipment”).

 If eBay had taken the user satisfaction of dissatisfaction more seriously, eBay could have changed their scheme. (They could not find the solution.)

If I will be able to explain the essentials of marketing, do the staff of sales department accept my suggestion? I hope so.