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."

For business to consumer marketing it is "the process by which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships, in order to capture value from customers in return". For business to business marketing it is creating value, solutions, and relationships either short term or long term with a company or brand. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments. It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and create value for their customers and for themselves.

Marketing is used to identify the customer, satisfy the customer, and keep the customer. With the customer as the focus of its activities, marketing management is one of the major components of business management. Marketing evolved to meet the stasis in developing new markets caused by mature markets and overcapacities in the last 2-3 centuries.^{[citation needed]} The adoption of marketing strategies requires businesses to shift their focus from production to the perceived needs and wants of their customers as the means of staying profitable.^{[citation needed]}

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (/ˈdʒɒbz/; February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, designer and inventor. He is best known as the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Through Apple, he was widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution and for his influential career in the computer and consumer electronics fields. Jobs also co-founded and served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar.

In the late 1970s, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak engineered one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa and, one year later, the Macintosh. During this period he also led efforts that would begin the desktop publishing revolution, notably through the introduction of the LaserWriter and the associated PageMaker software.

Seth Godin (born July 10, 1960) is an American entrepreneur, author and public speaker. Godin popularized the topic of permission marketing.

Born in Mount Vernon, New York, Seth Godin graduated from Tufts University in 1979 with a degree in computer science and philosophy. Godin earned his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. From 1983 to 1986, he worked as a brand manager at Spinnaker Software. For a time Godin commuted every week between California and Boston both to do his new job and to complete his MBA..

After leaving Spinnaker Software in 1986, Godin used $20,000 in savings to found Seth Godin Productions, primarily a book packaging business, out of a studio apartment in New York City. It was in the same offices that Godin met Mark Hurst and founded Yoyodyne. After a few years Godin sold the book packaging business to his employees and focused his efforts on Yoyodyne, one of the first online marketing companies.^{[citation needed]} It was with Yoyodyne that Godin came up with the concept of permission marketing.^{[citation needed]} For a period of time, Godin served as a columnist for Fast Company^{[citation needed]}

Avinash Kaushik is an American entrepreneur, author and public speaker. In his writing and speaking Kaushik has championed the principle of aggregation of marginal gains, and encouraged the pursuit of simplifying perceived complexity in the field of data analytics.

Kaushik is on the Advisory Board of University of Toronto Rotman School of Management's program on CRM Excellence as well as on the Advisory Board of University of California at Irvine's program on Web Intelligence. He is also an Associate Instructor at the University of British Columbia for the Web Analytics program.

Kaushik has delivered keynotes at conferences such as The Art of Marketing, eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, CMA Next, and JMP Innovators Summit. Kaushik received the 2009 Harry V Roberts Statistical Advocate of the Year award from the American Statistical Association and the 2011 Most Influential Industry Contributor award from the Web Analytics Association.

In 2008, Kaushik co-founded Market Motive Inc., which provides online education and certification in six Internet disciplines such as Search Engine Optimization, Paid Search Advertising, Social Media, Web Analytics, Conversion & Public Relations.

Philip Kotler (born 27 May 1931 in Chicago) is an American academic focused on marketing. The author of Marketing Management among dozens of other textbooks and books, he is the S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. The nine volume Legends in Marketing: Philip Kotler published in 2012 collects over 150 of his articles, with critical commentary.

"Guru" books that contain a complete chapter on Professor Kotler's contributions and accomplishments: