Definitions of Marketing

‘The process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchange and satisfy individual and organisational objectives’ American Marketing Association (1985)

‘The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers’ needs profitably’ Chartered Institute of Marketing (1984)

‘Marketing is a social and managerial process by which people and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering and exchanging products and value with others’ Kotler, Bowen and Makens (2003)

‘Marketing involves a management decision process for producers, focused on a customer decision process, with the two sets of decisions coming together in an exchange transaction’ Middleton (2001)

‘It is the customer who determines what a business is. It is the customer alone whose willingness to pay for a good or service converts it in to wealth, things into goods. What the customer thinks he is buying, what he considers value is decisive – it determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper’ Drucker (1973)

‘Management must think of itself not as producing products, but as providing customer-creating value satisfactions. It must push this idea into the entire organisation. It has to do this continuously and with a kind of flair that excites and stimulates the people in it’

‘A truly marketing-minded firm tries to create value-satisfying goods and services that consumers will want to buy. What it offers for sale includes not only the generic product or service, but also how it is made available to the customer, in what form, when, under what conditions, and at what terms of trade. Most important, what it offers for sale is determined not by the seller but by the buyer’ Levitt (1960)

‘Marketing is about customers. It is about how to find them, how to satisfy them, and how to keep them. Without customers, there will be no money to pay staff, creditors and shareholders. Without customers, there can be no reason for the organisation to exist’ Morgan (1996)

‘to practice marketing effectively requires a deep knowledge of customers  and their changing needs and expectations, focused on product satisfaction and value for money’ Sir Colin Marshall

‘Selling focuses on the needs of the seller, marketing on the needs of the buyer. Selling is preoccupied with the seller’s need to convert his product into cash; marketing with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering, and finally consuming it’ Levitt (1960)

Societal and Relational-Centric Definitions of Marketing

‘The organisation’s task is to determine the needs, wants and interests of target markets and to deliver the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors in a way that preserves or enhances the customers’ and the society’s well being’ Kotler (1994)

‘Marketing is to establish, develop and commercialise long-term customer relationships so that objectives are met. This is done by a mutual exchange and keeping of promises.’ Grönroos (1989)

‘Relationship marketing refers to all marketing activities directed towards establishing, developing, and maintaining successful relational exchanges’ Morgan and Hunt (1994)