Marketing management is a business regulation focused on the practical application of marketing techniques and the management of a firm's marketing resources and activities. Marketing managers are regularly responsible for influencing the level, timing, and composition of customer demand in a manner that will accomplish the company's objectives. There is no commonly accepted definition of the term. In part, this is due to the fact that the role of a marketing manager can vary significantly based on a business' size, corporate culture, and industry context. For example, in a large consumer products company, the marketing manager may act as the overall general manager of his or her assigned product category or brand with full profit & loss accountability. In contrast, a small law firm may have no marketing personnel at all, requiring the firm's partners to make marketing management decisions on a mainly informal basis.
In the extensively used text Marketing Management (2006), Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller describe marketing management as "the art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping and growing customers through creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value." From this viewpoint, the scope of marketing management is quite wide. The implication of such a definition is that any activity or resource the firm uses to get customers and manage the company's relationships with them is within the purview of marketing management. In addition, the Kotler and Keller definition encompasses both the development of new products and services and their delivery to customers. Noted marketing expert Regis McKenna expressed a similar view in his influential 1991 Harvard Business Review article "Marketing is everything." McKenna argued that because marketing management encompasses all factors that influence a company's capacity to deliver value to customers; it must be "all-pervasive, part of everyone's job description, from the receptionists to the Board of Directors."
But because many businesses functions with a greatly more limited definition of marketing, such statements can appear contentious or even ludicrous to some business executives. This is particularly true in those companies where the marketing department is accountable for little more than developing sales brochures and executing advertising campaigns. The broader, more sophisticated definitions of marketing management from Drucker, Kotler and other scholars are therefore juxtaposed against the narrower operating actuality of many businesses. The source of confusion here is often that inside any given firm, the term marketing management may be interpreted to mean whatever the marketing department happens to do, rather than a term that encompasses all marketing activities even those marketing activities that are really performed by other departments, such as the sales, finance, or operations departments. If, for example, the finance department of a given company makes pricing decisions, that finance department has accountability for an important component of marketing management pricing.
In the extensively used text Marketing Management (2006), Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller describe marketing management as "the art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping and growing customers through creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value." From this viewpoint, the scope of marketing management is quite wide. The implication of such a definition is that any activity or resource the firm uses to get customers and manage the company's relationships with them is within the purview of marketing management. In addition, the Kotler and Keller definition encompasses both the development of new products and services and their delivery to customers. Noted marketing expert Regis McKenna expressed a similar view in his influential 1991 Harvard Business Review article "Marketing is everything." McKenna argued that because marketing management encompasses all factors that influence a company's capacity to deliver value to customers; it must be "all-pervasive, part of everyone's job description, from the receptionists to the Board of Directors."
But because many businesses functions with a greatly more limited definition of marketing, such statements can appear contentious or even ludicrous to some business executives. This is particularly true in those companies where the marketing department is accountable for little more than developing sales brochures and executing advertising campaigns. The broader, more sophisticated definitions of marketing management from Drucker, Kotler and other scholars are therefore juxtaposed against the narrower operating actuality of many businesses. The source of confusion here is often that inside any given firm, the term marketing management may be interpreted to mean whatever the marketing department happens to do, rather than a term that encompasses all marketing activities even those marketing activities that are really performed by other departments, such as the sales, finance, or operations departments. If, for example, the finance department of a given company makes pricing decisions, that finance department has accountability for an important component of marketing management pricing.
