In this article we shall appreciate the way Marketing has been defined by established Organizations/Professionals. An understanding of these definitions will provide a wholesome insight with respect to the nature and process of Marketing and its role in Business.
American Marketing Association
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.
This definition focuses on Marketing comprising various elements that add value for the different stakeholders in a Business, including the overall society.
Philip Kotler
Marketing is the science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit. Marketing identifies unfulfilled needs and desires. It defines, measures and quantifies the size of the identified market and the profit potential. It pinpoints which segments the company is capable of serving best and it designs and promotes the appropriate products and services.
This definition positions Marketing as both a science and an art, aimed at satisfying targeted needs. Emphasis is on staying profitable while delivering this value proposition and connecting with the right segment.
Marjorie Clayman
Marketing is building your brand, convincing people that your brand (meaning your product/service/company) is the best and protecting the relationships you build with your customers.
This definition focuses on the role of Marketing in building a brand and sustaining long term satisfying relationships with customers.
Chris Garrett
Marketing is the process of building relationships with prospects and customers so that you can profitably develop and promote products and services.
This definition focuses on relationship building with prospective and existing customers, offering them desirable products and services at a profit.
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Josh Glantz
Marketing is the conversation between a company or brand and a consumer that ultimately leads to brand recall, preference or a transaction.
This definition emphasises the role of Marketing in creating and promoting brands which can converse with customers.
Trish Green
Marketing is a way to connect what products and services you have to offer with customers who want and need such products and services. It is multi-faceted, starting with researching your target market and how best to deliver the message to coming up with a plan to execute your promotion via various marketing media. The goal is to develop a strategy to create, price and distribute your products and services for an exchange that will satisfy both your and your customers’ objectives.
This definition positions Marketing as a mutually satisfying function for both customers and the organization. It portrays marketing comprising activities like research, pricing, promotion and distribution serving the needs of customers and the organization.
Ann Handley
Marketing is anything you create or share that tells your story.
This definition presents Marketing as an opportunity to craft a story that people embrace and share. Everything you do to market your business is another paragraph, page, or chapter in the story people hear from you. And the story people hear is the one they act (or don’t act) on, and repeat (or don’t repeat) to others.
Max Kalehoff
Marketing is the art and science of creating, delighting and keeping customers, while making a profit and building enterprise value. Marketing integrates, formally or informally, many disciplines and every organizational function. Marketing should embrace the highest ethical standards, respect the environment, and strive to make the world a better place.
This definition sees Marketing as both a science and an art for developing and sustaining customers at a profit, and in the process generating value for the organization. It focuses on an integration of Marketing with other business functions to offer an ethical and satisfying proposition to the World around.
Paul Kulavis
Marketing is discovering what the prospect wants and demands and delivering it more efficiently and effectively than the competition.
This definition focuses on the function of Marketing to deliver a satisfaction to the customer as per his/her need and being able to do so more efficiently than competition.
Gerry Lantzm
Marketing, defined as a value-exchange, is a two-way exchange of value between a marketer and a consumer by providing the right product or service to the right target in the right state of need and by using the right vehicles for interaction and purchase. As a conversation, marketing discovers and tells the right story about its product or service that engages the consumer in an authentic conversation including true listening, engagement, affiliation, and ultimately purchase.
This definition identifies Marketing as a value exchange platform for the organization and the customer, where the latter pays the former for a need satisfying product/service. It also highlights the importance of engaging the customers in a purchase driven activity on the basis of the story the Organization shares with the customer.
In a nutshell, all these definitions understand Marketing as a function which establishes a long and sustainable relationship with target customers (both existing and prospective) on the basis of delivering satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competition.
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