Marketing

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Introduction tomarketing

1.1 Introduction

We begin by examining the basic idea of marketing as a business discipline. The concept of marketing is not particularly complicated or even original. Sayings such as ‘the customer comes first’ or ‘the customer is always right’ have been used by forward-thinking merchants and entrepreneurs ever since the Industrial Revolution. Marketing is a more formal business orientation, based on a simple principle of consumer sovereignty that has developed into a management discipline over the years. The subject of marketing as a management discipline originated in the USA in the 1950s, but its origins go back much further. As William J. Stanton of the University of Colorado has stated, ‘the foundations of marketing ...