Hola Todos!
I found it hard to believe that after 2 years and 261 posts, that I NEVER had an explicit post on my definition of marketing: Find out what people want and give it to them!
Recently, former student Jimmy Miguel, emailed me the following:
“Dr. Dano – How you doing? Tell you what, you have some crazy good timing, I was in a Marketing workshop just last weekend and the guy that was presenting went around the room asking what we do for a career. Once everyone was done he stopped and asks out loud: “what is marketing?” Obviously, considering the majority of the audience were marketing professionals, we all knew what it was but there was some ambivalence on how exactly to describe it. After a couple valiant but feeble attempts by my cohorts I piped up and said “Finding what people want and giving it to them.”
He was kinda taken aback because everyone was using all this sophisticated vernacular to describe what it was, but in its most basic form, that’s it. He did use a different choice of words to describe it, but he pretty much agreed that it was an accurate definition. All these years later, I still use that as my definition… Sounds like a good Nuggetville posting to me haha.”
Agreed Jimmy. It does sound like a good Nuggetville post and I was really surprised that since starting the blog in August 2011, that “the definition” was never a post in-it-of-itself (note: while never detailed, it has been mentioned previously). Over the last 10 years as a marketing professor, I have been teaching Principles of Marketing or the foundation Marketing class on the graduate level at least 3 to 4 times per year and I tell the students that the definition highlights the three most important chapters in the textbook:
“Find out (marketing research) what people want (consumer behavior) and give it to them (segmentation, targeting, and positioning)”
Truth be told, I learned my definition of marketing while working on my MBA at Saint Joseph’s University. In my foundation MBA marketing class, professor John Stanton was the first person I heard use it (he was working on a book at the time, Success Leaves Clues). I know a nugget when I hear one and I, like Jimmy in the quote above, never forgot it.
Something to think about today…
Best regards
Dr. Dan-o
Associate Professor of Marketing
Stillman School of Business
Seton Hall University