Marketing management an art or a science

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Marketing Management: An Art or a Science?

Marketing is an activity of producing, promoting, and providing goods and services to customers and businesses (Boone & Kurtz, 2006). It is a process of creating and directing an organization to sell goods or services that people are willing to buy (Groonroos, 2004). Marketing builds and maintains a preference for a particular product and company within the target market. It involves acquisition of new customers and retention of existing customers.

Philip Kotler describes it as a social process that enables individuals and groups to fulfill their needs by making and exchanging goods and values with others (Kotler, 2009). Marketing includes selling, advertising and marketing mix (Product, Price, Place and Promotion). These four Ps of marketing mix consist of various sub-factors and play an important role in the process of marketing (Kotler, 2002).

Marketing management is not a single step; it includes various other activities in it. It starts from consumer and ends with consumer, which means that consumer plays an important role in the process of marketing (Boone & Kurtz, 2006). Marketing management starts with the production of a particular product and passes through various steps, such as advertising, promotion, personal selling, market research, etc. (Messikomer, 1987). The study of marketing management gives us the understanding of market, consumer behavior, marketing planning, marketing mix, marketing strategy, managing the product, distribution, pricing strategy, etc. (Boone & Kurtz, 2006).

Marketing process is both art and science. Marketing is incomplete without a good mix of both the worlds. Good Marketing is no accident but an intelligent mix of both its scientific and artistic sides. There is a constant tension between the formulation side of the marketing (scientific) side and its creative side (artistic). Whether Marketing is an Art or science, this has been a continuous and never ending debate among the marketing professionals, marketing community and business world. Marketing process involves both very subjective and objective processes that give credibility to the claims to both sides of the debaters. Marketing becomes art when creative, intuitive process start coming into practice for developing a marketing campaign for any product or service.

Marketing becomes science when models like porter's five forces, value chain analysis, consumer segmentation, and brand positioning start coming into picture for marketing of a product or service. Market research methodologies, segmentation, targeting, positioning all such tools of marketing make it a scientific process to a great extent. This paper would further look marketing from both as art and science perspectives respective.

Marketing is an art as it attempts to understand the consumer behaviour which involves ...