ABSTRACT
In the contemporary industrial world, there is no escaping marketing-it is central to our lives and touches virtually every aspect of our everyday existence. Marketing encompasses the creation of products and services that enable us to satisfy our basic (e.g., hunger, safety) and higher-order (e.g., achievement, status, approval) needs, enriches our lives through the delivery of entertainment and other pleasure-oriented offerings; it nurtures and facilitates our relationships with others; and it plays a significant role in the determination of who we are to ourselves and to others. Through the marketing process, new product innovations appear in the marketplace that make our lives easier and more comfortable, providing means by which we can save time and reduce distances. Yet marketing involves more than the development of products and services-it also involves how these offerings become available to us through various channels, including “brick-and-mortar” retail stores and via online e-tailers and traders; it entails a determination of the prices asked for products and services that are both affordable to buyers and profitable to the entrepreneurial or corporate interests offering them; and it is responsible for the myriad means by which marketplace offerings are communicated and promoted.
