Multitasking

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From the earliest time people have been trying to do several things simultaneously. They can read a book, cook dinner, talk on the phone, and do many other things at the same time. As car has become available, the time of multitasking has increased: people drive, listen to the radio, eat, and smoke in the cars at the same time.

Now an arsenal of new technology (from notebook computers to cellular phones and portable televisions) makes it possible for everyone to multitask all day.

The computer industry introduced the word "multitasking" to the vocabulary. Mainframe computers that handled networks were the original multitaskers. Apple's and Microsoft's software turned millions of personal computers into multitaskers. Today millions of people can set their personal computers to multitask while they are themselves multitask: talking on the phone, receiving faxes, and looking through newspapers at the same time.

While multitasking is not bad for computers, it may be a bad thing for some people. Psychologists say it is possible for the human brain to process two or more tasks at the same time, but only one of them receives sharp attention. Multitasking makes stressful lives of people more stressful. Experts say that although a lot of people believe that multitasking enchances their productivity, in fact it can reduce it.

Because of the limitation of human brain, multitasking can lead to many mistakes. Indeed, a person who is doing several things at the same time may put the wrong number in a spreadsheet or send a message to the wrong e-mail address. Moreover, people on the other end of the line don't usually like to talk to a person who is doing something else while talking to them. It may alienate the people from the multitasker.

Multitaskers also like to do more than one thing at once even in their leisure time. They cannot watch television without reading a newspaper or have dinner without watching TV.

Now multitasking takes place nearly everywhere. A lot of businessmen and managers are never far from their notebook comput­ers and cellular telephones. They are almost always doing two or three things at once, driving and dialing, speaking and typing on keyboards of their computers. On airplanes they are using their notebook computers to answer e-mail messages. While driving, they are speak­ing on their cellular phones. "Why wait?" they ask. "That's the world: we live right now".

As defined by the committee on definitions of the American Marketing Association, marketing is "the performance of business activities directed toward and incident to, the flow of goods and services from producer to consumer or user."

Today discovering demand, managing demand, and physically sup­plying demand constitute the three major divisions of Marketing effort undertaken by many firms. Marketing management approached this status in the 1950's when the General Electric Company enunciated a policy declaring that "marketing begins with the consumer." By discovering and filling unmet wants, its marketing program was designed to produce what General Electric could sell because customers had certain unmet wants. Subsequently, having what you could sell instead of trying to "high pressure" customers into buying what you have required provided the use of marketing research and environment "scanning" of conditions affecting business.

The key concept of market selection and product planning is the Product Life Cycle. It predicts that any product pass through various stages between its life and death (introduction — growth — maturity — decline). So companies can make better marketing decisions if they find out where each of their products stands in its life cycle.