[originaltext] What is marketing? Some people hold the mistaken idea that ma

What is marketing? Some people hold the mistaken idea that marketing is a little more than selling. But marketing is more than just a business activity. In fact, it’s something everyone does quite often. Acting as either the customer or the marketer. Consider a few of the activities we take for granted, like riding a bus, shopping for clothes, reading a newspaper or watching television. All of these rely on marketing. It’s hard to imagine our contemporary life without marketing. You are on the customer side of marketing when you shop at the supermarket, pay your tuition or go to a movie. You are on the marketer side of the transaction when you advertise for a roommate, convince your friend to lend you their bicycle or interview for a job. In the last two examples, you are marketing yourself and your credibility. Job applicants use resume as marketing tools to gain interviews with potential employers. And then use the interview to demonstrate what desirable products they are. Similarly models and actors use photographs to market themselves. Artists and writers supply samples of their work. Even in the commercial round, companies aren’t the only marketers and goods aren’t the only item marketed. Football teams market themselves when they give team photos and other premiums to their fans. And non-profit group market what they do, the medical research or political action, when they solicit contributions of time and money or try to influence people’s behaviors.
    In 1985, the American Marketing Association redesigned marketing as the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy the individual and organizational objective. This definition encompasses all the diverse activities of marketing and highlights the central marketing functions — the exchange process.