Anna Maria Villa and Philip Kotler at the Marketing Hall of Fame 2014 event.

Well, what an honor for me to finally meet the father of modern day marketing, Professor Philip *Kotler.  I was speechless….sort of… you know I’m Italian…speechless is not part of my nature…. but, I was just…you know….I met my idol….!!!

Here’s an individual who has defined marketing as we know it today. Marketing Management is his masterpiece.  With this work, he pulled all the pieces of marketing together in a comprehensive and manageable discipline.

I’ve read so many of his books.  Why?  Each one makes sense and each one is practical, in nature. You can implement just about any concept he writes about. He’s a strategic thinker… He’s a strategic planner. He comes out of an economics background, which is what marketing is all about….the exchange… Whether it’s a monetary exchange or some other form…a vote, a slap on the back, a screaming crowd….  And, he comes out of behavioral science, which focuses on understanding people, their needs, why they act the way they do and satisfying unfulfilled needs and desires.

Here’s an excerpt from Kotler’s comprehensive definition of marketing:

 

3. What is #Marketing?

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.

Marketing is often performed by a department within the organization. This is both good and bad. It’s good because it unites a group of trained people who focus on the marketing task. It’s bad because marketing activities should not be carried out in a single department but they should be manifest in all the activities of the organization.

In my 11th edition of Marketing Management, I describe the most important concepts of marketing in the first chapter.  They are: segmentation, targeting, positioning, needs, wants, demand, offerings, brands, value and satisfaction, exchange, transactions, relationships and networks, marketing channels, supply chain, competition, the marketing environment, and marketing programs.  These terms make up the working vocabulary of the marketing professional.

Marketing’s key processes are:  (1) opportunity identification, (2) new product development, (3) customer attraction, (4) customer retention and loyalty building, and (5) order fulfillment.  A company that handles all of these processes well will normally enjoy success.  But when a company fails at any one of these processes, it will not survive. ”

You can find more of his  FAQS HERE.

More info on Kotler, click here.

 

*Philip Kotler is the S.C. Johnson and Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Northwestern University Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Chicago.  He received his Ph.D. in Economics at MIT, his Masters degree in Economics at the University of Chicago. He did postdoctoral work in mathematics at Harvard University and in behavioural science at the University of Chicago.