How would you define marketing?

In a simple way, marketing is encouraging customers to buy a product or service. The marketing strategy should be with integrity, honesty, and justice from an ethical marketing perspective. 

American Marketing Association (AMA) definitions of marketing are reviewed and re-approved or changed every three years. The AMA defines marketing as: “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large” (Definitions of Marketing, 2017).  

A Chronology Of The Definition Of Marketing by Brunswick (2014) looks at various marketing environmental factors that influenced the change and chronological evolution of marketing definitions in the last century. Below are examples of three-time periods:

1910-1920 Marketing “to the producer is the manner in which the product is disposed of, how it is distributed for him-often with his cooperation-thru the various channels of trade.”

1930-1940 “Marketing has to do with getting goods and services from the hands of the producers into the hands of the ultimate consumers.”

1970-1980 “Marketing is a set of activities necessary and incidental to bringing about exchange relationships in our economic system.”

When considering Marketing strategy Walker & Mullins (2014) believe that the primary “focus of marketing strategy is to effectively allocate and coordinate marketing resources and activities to accomplish the firm’s objectives within a specific product-market.” They believe that the critical issue concerning a marketing strategy’s scope specifies the target market or markets for a particular product or product line. Finally, the firm seeks “competitive advantage and synergy through a well-integrated program of marketing mix elements (primarily the 4 Ps of product, price, place, and promotion) tailored to the needs and wants of potential customers in that target market” (Walker & Mullins, 2014).

If I had to formulate an academic definition of marketing, it would be based on Dr. Philip Kotler’s description. He is one of the world’s foremost experts on marketing’s strategic practice. He defines “marketing as the science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit” (Kotler, 2011). 

We see how marketing has evolved over the last century from the above marketing definitions. The art and evolution of marketing have been shaped into an academic discipline of its own. 

References

Brunswick, G. J. (2014). A Chronology Of The Definition Of Marketing. Journal of Business & Economics Research (JBER), 12(2), 105. https://doi.org/10.19030/jber.v12i2.8523

Definitions of Marketing. (2017). American Marketing Association; American Marketing Association. https://www.ama.org/the-definition-of-marketing-what-is-marketing/

Kotler, P. (2011). Reinventing Marketing to Manage the Environmental Imperative. Journal of Marketing, 75(4), 132–135. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.75.4.132

Walker, O., & Mullins, J. (2014). Marketing strategy: a decision-focused approach. (8th ed.). Mcgraw-Hill Education - Europe.