At the beginning of any marketing course or programme it is important to appreciate how exchange processes work. An exchange process is simply when an individual or an organisation decides to satisfy a need or want by offering some money or goods or services in exchange. It’s that simple, and you enter into exchange relationships all the time.
The exchange process extends into relationship marketing. With relationship marketing we purposefully look at the long-term relationship with our target audience, and aim to grow our business. By delivering value to our customers we consistently nurture the relationship with customers. Later in your studies you will come across relationship marketing and customer relationship management, which encompass the traits of a basic marketing exchange process and take it much further.
Exchange is the act of obtaining a desired object from someone by offering something in return.
(Armstrong et al 2009)
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For example you go into a restaurant and order your favourite meal. You eat the food and then you pay for it with your credit card. That’s a basic exchange relationship.
You use your Android or iPhone to download an app and you pay for it using PayPal. Again you have gone through and completed an exchange
process.
You see a newspaper advertisem*nt asking you to donate blood and you return a coupon to become a blood donor.
You watch the news on TV and listen to the views of a political candidate, and on polling day you vote for that person.
Can you think of any more examples of marketing as an exchange process? Write down three more examples in addition to those above.
Marketing managers attempt to engender a response from a marketing stimulus. This is the exchange process as it begins. Let’s remember that marketing extends further than goods or services. It could be that a government is trying to persuade its population to stop smoking, or speeding. So marketing is a series of actions and plans that are designed to recruit, retain and extend goods and services to a target audience. This is the basic exchange process in marketing.
