Michaele Upton

Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships. The American Marketing Association has defined 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 is used to create the customer, to keep the customer and to satisfy the customer. With the customer as the focus of its activities, it can be concluded that Marketing is one of the premier components of Business Management – the other being Innovation. Other services and management activities such as Operations (or Production), Human Resources, Accounting, Law and Legal aspects can be “bought in” or “contracted out”.