Marketing Definition

So, define marketing then ?

In my post What Is Marketing I tried to describe a general sense of marketing, not just from the point of view of a single activity but the journey and obstacles faced.

This time though I thought I would try and look at the institutional references towards marketing whether they be associations, encyclopaedias or centres of learning and education etc. to try and understand how marketing is seen by the world.

My gut feel suggested that I was going to find a variety of views which may or may not conflict in some way, but I was pleased to find that on the whole there was general agreement, with a few interesting odds and sods.

I thought I would start my search with the good old internet and work my way through to other books and references if necessary.

So in the Wiktionary marketing is defined as:

“The promotion, distribution and selling of a product or service; includes market research and advertising.”

OK, short and sweet and it conjures up a reasonable pictures (on the surface obviously).

Moving on to Wikipedia;

I was disappointed to find that the only reference was to the American Marketing Association so I hoped over the their website and had a look at the Definition of Marketing page.

“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. (Approved October 2007)”

The only thing that threw me here was the term “offering”, but I understand the vagueness of the term when you consider that marketing is not just a commercial activity used for products or services, its also used by governments or charities to raise awareness or bring about change where they are not necessarily selling anything.

Wordnetweb describes it as;

Marketing (the commercial processes involved in promoting and selling and distributing a product or service) “most companies have a manager in charge of marketing” marketing (shopping at a market) “does the weekly marketing at the supermarket”

Now I have never heard anybody popping down the shops to do their local marketing, have you ?

I then hoped over the channel to The Chartered Institute of Marketing where marketing is defined as;

“The management process responsible for identifying , anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably”

I had difficulty with this one also as its seems to be entangled with management which is neither here nor there as far as I am concerned. What is import is the reason for it and its outcome, how it gets done is another issue. I do however agree that marketing is important enough to be considered as not just a single task performed by one person but a complex web of people, skills, methods, channels ans do on that need carefully orchestrating towards a goal. The profit motive is also questionable (not for business though) when you consider that government and charities also use it.

So that almost brings us to the and of this little bit of research….”sorry, what”…..”oh!, how do I define marketing “…I hear you say (well you did ask for it having reading this far), well here goes;

“Marketing is delivering a message to your key audiences that causes them to act to the benefit of the message recipient and its source.”

More marketing defintions

Why not share your own definition of marketing…

Leave a reply

Click here to cancel reply.

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

CAPTCHA Code