The most difficult problem in many industrial businesses to-day is that of marketing, or selling. It is not true nowadays that demand regulates the supply. The seller has to go in search of the buyer as often as not. Modern selling, to a larger extent than ever before, consists in creating demand by stimulating amongst particular classes of the community a desire for the article.
Thus the marketing of goods has become an expensive affair it is well enough known that, as a general rule, it costs more to distribute goods than it does to manufacture them. The retail price is made up of manufacturing cost, plus the selling, or distributing costs, and the latter is generally almost as much as the former. Often it is far higher, especially if the goods have to pass through the hands of middlemen before they reach the consumer. The necessary middlemen may include wholesaler as well as retailer. In several trades the middle man shows signs of disappearing; the manufacturer is dealing directly with the retailer, and sometimes with the consumer. In this respect the organization and control of the sales side of a business are, therefore, as important as the manufacturing side. Not only have markets to be found, but an economical basis of marketing goods has to be fixed and maintained, if sales are to be remunerative. leia todo o artigo
