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Philip Kotler Collection | AMA Journals

Philip Kotler Collection | AMA Journals

Who is Philip Kotler

Philip Kotler is Professor Emeritus of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Professor Kotler is the author of over 50 books and over 150 articles in leading journals, including Journal of Marketing, several of which have received best-article awards. He has won several honors from the American Marketing Association (AMA) and its special interest groups, including the first recipient of the AMA-Irwin-McGraw-Hill Distinguished Marketing Educator Award. He was chosen as the “Leader in Marketing Thought” by the Academic Members of the AMA in a 1975 survey. In 2011, he was named a Legend in Marketing, with a nine-volume set of books published honoring his contributions; in 2012, he was #1 on the Management A-List of Academics; in 2013 he was named an AMA Fellow.

Articles From Philip Kotler

Reinventing Marketing to Manage the Environmental Imperative

Marketers in the past have based their strategies on the assumption of infinite resources and zero environmental impact. With the growing recognition of finite resources and high environmental costs, marketers need to reexamine their theory and practices. They need to revise their policies on product development, pricing, distribution, and branding. The recent financial meltdown has added another layer of concern as consumers adjust their lifestyles to a lower level of income and spending. Companies must balance more carefully their growth goals with the need to pursue sustainability. Increased attention will be paid to employing demarketing and social marketing thinking to meet the new challenges.

The Role Played by the Broadening of Marketing Movement in the History of Marketing Thought

Kotler responds to “Scholarly Research in Marketing: Exploring the ‘4 Eras’ of Thought Development” by Wilkie and Moore. He offers expanded perspective on the role and impact of the broadening of marketing movement.

Marketing in the Network Economy

As the twenty-first century dawns, marketing is poised for revolutionary changes in its organizational context, as well as in its relationship with customers. Driven by a dynamic and knowledge-rich environment, the hierarchical organizations of the twentieth century are disaggregating into a variety of network forms, including internal networks, vertical networks, intermarket networks, and opportunity networks. The role of marketing in each network is changing in profound ways. Marketing increasingly will be responsible for creating and managing new marketing knowledge, education, real-time market information systems, intrafirm integration, conflict resolution, technology forecasting, risk and investment analysis, transfer pricing of tangibles and intangibles, and the coordination of the network’s economic and social activities. It will explore new frontiers in multilateral marketing, reshape markets through technology convergence and electronic commerce, organize consumer communities, and aggregate consumer information and demand into saleable business assets. The most radical implication for marketing is the shift from being an agent of the seller to being an agent of the buyer, from being a marketer of goods and services to being a customer consultant and manager of his or her saleable consumption assets.

The Marketing of Social Causes: The First 10 Years

The application of marketing to the promotion of social causes was proposed a decade ago. The authors position social marketing as an approach to social change, describe its evolution, and review social marketing applications and assess their impact.

Strategies for Introducing Marketing into Nonprofit Organizations

Marketing is a topic of growing interest to nonprofit organization managers as their organizations confront new, complex marketplace problems. These institution heads are taking their first, tentative steps toward marketing, often confusing it with its advertising and selling sub-functions. Nonprofit institutions can introduce marketing in a number of ways, such as appointing a marketing committee or task force, hiring an advertising agency or marketing research firm, hiring a marketing consultant, or appointing a marketing director or marketing vice president.

Marketing and Public Relations: Should they be partners or rivals?

One can sense growing contusion as to the future roles of marketing and public relations in the modern organization: (1) Marketing people are increasingly interested in incorporating publicity as a tool within the marketing mix, although this tool has normally been controlled by public relations. (2) Public relations people are growing increasingly concerned with their company’s marketing practices, questioning whether they “square” with the company’s social responsibility. They seek more influence over marketing and more of a counseling and policy-making role. (3) At the same time, a new corporate function called public affairs has split off from public relations, causing some confusion as to the scope of public relations.

Marketing Professional Services

MARKETING thinking and practice has been gradually moving into service industries. Its role in service industries is still limited, however. It has achieved some utilization in banks and airlines, to a lesser degree in insurance, brokerage, and public transportation, and still less in law, accounting, management consulting, medicine, architecture, and engineering. Even marketing research firms and advertising agencies tend to under-apply marketing concepts to the marketing of their own services. Many professional practitioners in these industries deny a role to marketing or, if they do accept it, have a very inadequate idea of its content and how it can be implemented in a firm. Marketing, far from being a minor negligible function in managing a professional services firm, is one of the most important functions for helping such firms meet the unprecedented challenges they are facing.

Marketing during Periods of Shortage

THE year 1973 sadly marked the end of the Glorious Age of Abundance, in which man enjoyed for a brief historical period the happy illusion that his world would supply an inexhaustible amount of food, materials, and fuels to nourish his growing appetite for material comfort and enhancement. During this age, the harsh laws of scarcity economics were briefly suspended, and producers and consumers devoured the world’s natural resources in pursuit of limitless consumption. Homo sapien Americanus enjoyed the Good Life through prepackaged foods, air-conditioned surroundings, appliance-happy homes, exotic travel, and clothes and body lotions to meet every whim and desire. If he ever worried about this ending, he was immediately calmed by the great American myth that science and technology can solve all problems.

The Major Tasks of Marketing Management

Marketers engage in a variety of tasks which are not carefully distinguished in the literature but which are radically different in the problems they pose. Eight different marketing tasks can be distinguished, each arising out of a unique state of demand. Depending upon whether demand is negative, nonexistent, latent, irregular, faltering, full, overfull, or unwholesome, the marketer finds himself facing a unique challenge to his craft and his concepts.

Buying is Marketing Too!

Marketing is widely viewed as a subject serving the interest of sellers. Buyers are typically studied from the perspective of helping sellers achieve their objectives. Earlier students of marketing studied both parties to the market transaction and how each pursued their marketing advantage. The buyer has a broad range of marketing strategies available to increase the chances of consummating the desired transaction. This article attempts to restore interest among marketing practitioners and scholars in the objectives and strategies of the buyer.

A Generic Concept of Marketing

The proposal that marketing is relevant to all organizations having customer groups was advanced in the January, 1969 issue of this journal. It is now stated that the original broadening proposal should be broadened still further to include the transactions between an organization and all of its publics. The author sees marketing as the disciplined task of creating and offering values to others for the purpose of achieving a desired response. The generic view of marketing is defined by a set of four axioms and leads to new marketing typologies and views of the tasks of marketing management.

Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned Social Change

Can marketing concepts and techniques be effectively applied to the promotion of social objectives such as brotherhood, safe driving, and family planning? The applicability of marketing concepts to such social problems is examined in this article. The authors show how social causes can be advanced more successfully through applying principles of marketing analysis, planning, and control to problems of social change.

The Future of the Computer in Marketing

Several recent developments in marketing information systems and analytical marketing models are described. These developments in combination with others reported in this JOURNAL OF MARKETING symposium will cast the future marketing executive in the role of a market engineer. He will have a heavier involvement in planning rather than doing, and in profit maximization rather than sales maximization.

A New Form of Marketing Myopia: Rejoinder to Professor Luck

The authors offer a rejoinder to Professor D. J. Luck’s comments regarding their article and present additional commentary supporting their position that marketing’s role in society should be expanded.

Broadening the Concept of Marketing

Marketing is a pervasive societal activity that goes considerably beyond the selling of toothpaste, soap, and steel. The authors interpret the meaning of marketing for nonbusiness organizations and the nature of marketing functions such as product improvement, pricing, distribution, and communication in such organizations. The question considered is whether traditional marketing principles are transferable to the marketing of organizations, persons, and ideas.

Behavioral Models for Analyzing Buyers

What happens in the buyer’s mind between the acts of receiving impressions about products and making his purchasing decisions? Several theories exist, but there is no generally accepted comprehensive theory.

Marketing Mix Decisions for New Products

In evaluating a new product idea, it can be misleading to consider only one conception of the product’s attributes and marketing program. Different conceptions of the marketing mix will yield different estimates of profit potential. The author shows how the “best” marketing mix can be found under the conditions of limited information. The estimated profit potential of this best mix becomes the basis for judging whether the company should develop the new product.

The Use of Mathematical Models in Marketing

Marketing executives and mathematicians have joined forces in a search for improved decision models to handle such problems as new-product development, media selection, retail inventory control, and size of sales force.