What is Marketing?

The American Marketing Association defines marketing as ‘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.’ Marketing encompasses a range of processes that create and deliver value to a host of interested parties.  Every aspect of our lives is influenced by marketing in some way – the products and services we consume, the ideas and concepts we share, and our general interactions with each other as individuals and organizations.  Ultimately, marketing facilitates the exchange process across boundaries – people, organizational, and ideas – to ensure long-term customer satisfaction for all parties to the exchange.

The marketing domain covers a huge radius, including such areas as:  advertising, branding, consumer behavior, product design and development, marketing research, promotion and public relations, sales, retailing, distribution, pricing decisions, market segmentation, supply chain management and logistics, green marketing, marketing and society, non-profit marketing, cross-cultural marketing, and beyond.

Marketing expertise is a critical success factor for every sector of society – healthcare, financial services and banking, tourism and hospitality, sports and recreation, education, fashion merchandising and design, housing and construction, transportation, automotive, food, electronics, telecommunications, utilities, governmental entities (local, state, federal), etc., etc.  EVERYTHING MUST BE MARKETED! Marketing is ubiquitous.  Given the pervasive nature of marketing, there is an ever-increasing demand for marketing talent.