Marketing, one of the systems of managing capitalist enterprise, presupposing comprehensive and complex accounting of the processes taking place in the market for economic decision-making with a view to obtaining maximum profit. Marketing began to be introduced on a broad scale by big capitalist companies after World War II 213 in connection with the greater concentration of production and capital (see Concentration of Production; Concentration of Capital), the increasing monopolisation of the market, the heightening problem of sales and the competitive struggle between the major monopolies. The main functions of marketing are: studying purchasing demand (actual or potential) for goods and services; organisation of company research aimed at the development of new products satisfying consumer requirements; organisation and supervision of all the company’s activity, including production, transportation, packaging, advertising, technical servicing, sales, etc.; perfectioning sales techniques and coordinating planning and financing. Measures evolved on the basis of marketing improve sales organisation, methods of studying the population requirements and the dynamics of the buyer’s demand, producing of consumer goods, etc. Alongside this, marketing produces growing circulation costs because of the excessive development of the sales apparatus and of the means of stimulating them. In turn, increased circulation costs result in higher commodity prices, which are a heavy burden on the consumers’ shoulders and reduce demand. Thus, marketing is one of the attempts to resolve the contradiction of capitalism between the growing potentialities of production and relatively narrowing consumption.