The American Marketing Association adopted the following definition for marketing:  “Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.”  The role of marketing, the organizational function is to develop the set of marketing processes to fit the firm’s role in the business world – to create value to deliver to customers, communicate that value to the customers, and manage customer relationships.  Done properly, these processes result in a tangible benefit to customers, the firm, and stakeholders of the firm.

 

This includes three major steps as shown in Figure 1:

 

· Strategy

· Planning

· Execution