Marketing management

In his book, The Practice of Management, Peter Drucker wrote that "Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two--and only two--basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business." [2]

If marketing is the distinguishing function of the business, then what is marketing and how is it achieved?

1. "...an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders." [3]

2. "Human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange processes." Philip Kotler

3. "...the ongoing process of moving people closer to making a decision to purchase, use, follow, refer, upload, download, obey, reject, conform, become complacent to someone else's products, services or values. Simply, if it doesn't facilitate a "sale" then it's not marketing."[4]

4. "...the thing process of anticipating, identifying and satisfying customer requirements profitably" Chartered Institute of Marketing

5. "...find a limited market and seek to dominate it totally." Bill Good Marketing

Take these definitions collectively and a comprehensive definition of marketing, applicable to both business and non-business environments, emerges:

Processes, functions, exchanges or activities – that create perceived value by satisfying needs of those involved in the transaction. These processes succeed in moving people closer to making a decision to purchase and facilitate a "sale." Afterwards, these processes anticipate, identify and satisfy customer requirements profitably and successfully manage existing relationships.

Marketing, as suggested by the American Marketing Association, is "an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and