Firms in less competitive industries have pursued the objective of profit maximization singularly,
and have had some measure of success at least in the short-run. But economic and business
realities in the competitive world have shown that ability of business organization to achieve
their profit objective depends largely on the ability of such firms to attract and maintain
sufficient customer patronage through effective marketing concept. However, the attraction and
retention of customer patronage all thing being equal, will rest on the ability of the firm to
identify and sufficiently satisfy the needs and the wants of the client/customer. In order to
achieve the profit objective of the companies, there is need to fine tune their philosophies by
trying to identify, anticipate and produce only the goods and services that will satisfy their
customer needs and desires (Ifezue, 1990:24). This is the pre-requisite for the marketing concept.
The customer is therefore placed at the centre of the business activity rather than the organization
emphasizing on production as an end in itself with the opinion that what is produced can easily
be sold automatically (Kotler et al, 2010:66).
From the foregoing, the elements of marketing concept are crucial to the ultimate success of a
good service. With respect to the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) marketing, it can best be
described as the performance of such business activities directed at satisfying the needs and
wants of clients. The marketing concept was first defined as “a way of thinking; a management
philosophy guiding an organization's overall activities (affecting) all the efforts of the organization, not
just its marketing activities. Emerging first in the General Electric Company in 1952, the marketing
concept has been consistently redefined over the past five decades. The academic discipline of
marketing has two main schools of thought, where marketing is considered as either a philosophy or as a
function. The marketing concept considers marketing as a philosophy rather than a function. The concept
represents business thinking, and started developing since 1850s.
