What is Marketing?

I like a good definition; especially with my background in logic.

So what is the definition of marketing?

The American Marketing Association explains:

Marketing is 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.

Nice!

Since the institution in mind for this blog’s purposes is just my particular business, we’ll focus on the “activity” and “processes” of the first part. This indicates the marketing as different sort of thing from the actual product or service.

(Just to complicate things, the service of this business is marketing, and the marketing of that service includes this blog!)

To further ground our definitions, let’s take a look at the definition of “market”, from Mirriam-Webster:

an area or arena in which commercial dealings are conducted.

So in a very simple thought experiment, a farmer grows some corn. He would like to sell it. The corn is the product to sell. Perhaps he puts a sign outside of the farm that says “Corn for sale!” The sign is a marketing activity. It communicates the offering of the corn, to use the language from the first definition.

Maybe he takes his corn to a “market”, where he is likely to meet more potential customers. The act of taking the corn to market might also be considered “marketing,” in that it’s an activity for delivering the corn to customers. If the seller talks about his corn to a potential buyer, the language he uses to communicate is also a form of marketing. If he presents the corn laid out nicely in a basket, this is also marketing; it’s an activity for delivering the offering. It might also be a form of visual communication, indicating that the corn is cleaned and well-prepared for eating.

Perhaps the farmer wants to become known for selling quality corn, so that even if someone is not buying corn on a particular day, they think of him when they want to buy corn later. Now his offering is not just the particular corn he grew on one day, but his regularity in growing good corn. His reputation for growing good corn is a kind of product — a brand. He could use marketing to communicate that reputation, and increase his likelihood of selling corn.

There are other, more sophisticated ideas about what marketing is, and how it works.
But this is a good start.