Introduction

The question of what marketing is and what it entails has been the focus of a considerable amount of work over the past 60 years. From this, numerous defi nitions have emerged, with differing emphases on the process of marketing, the functional activities that constitute marketing, and the orientation (or philosophy) of marketing. The Chartered Institute of Marketing, for example, for a long time defi ned it as:

the management process for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profi tably.