Aim of marketing is to raise std of living: Philip Kotler

His books are the bible for management students across the globe. Anuradha Sengupta of CNBC-TV18 catches up with Philip Kotler, professor of international marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at the Northwestern University in the USA. At least two generations of marketers can claim to have learnt the basic principles of marketing management from him. He is in India this week after hosting the World Marketing Summit in Dhaka, Bangladesh where over four thousand people came to hear how marketing could create a better world. Check out what he’s got to say:

Below is the edited transcript of the interview. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: In the past decade, you have emphasized that marketing can and should create a better world. Tell us your vision for this function.

A: You know that there are many marketing congress where marketers exchange ideas and learning to help their businesses, but there is no congress where they meet in order to talk about how marketing can create a better world. We organized the world’s first World Marketing Summit with that idea in mind, and we focused on four areas namely - how can marketing help improve the environment, how can marketing help improve education, how can marketing deliver better health, how can marketing help shape the food supply so it is better.

Q: You mentioned the health sector can you illustrate how marketing can be put to work here?

A: Marketing can definitely make a difference in delivering better health to people who need them. It turns out that there are two particular things marketing can create. One is more accessibility; there are so many people in the world who are poor who have to walk miles to get to a health clinic, hoping there is even a doctor there, and so accessibility is one of the things that marketing is good at.

Normally, we call it improving the channels of distribution. the places where you can get access to the service called health.

The second way we are going to prove things is by affordability. We are going to not only use doctors, but we are going to train what we call nurse practitioners, who will be delivering good solutions to common problems of health. So the brief answer is we can improve accessibility and affordability for health.

Q: Why would you say that is a marketing solution?

A: Because marketers are always trying to solve needs by increasing the availability of good service and that exactly is a mission of marketers. In fact what is marketing? You are going to a basic question. The basic question is, is marketing about selling products or is it about solving customer problems? One of the earliest wonderful definitions of marketing is the aim of marketing is to raise the standard of living, and everything that makes up good living. Health is one of the things that makes good living and marketers have figured out how to create value.

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