Certainly: the task of bringing the company closer to the market is a function of marketing.

Thank you Roberto - Minadeo

The scoreboard at current is; 1 affirmative

Marketing and management are very important branches of science, they are related to economics and trade. Marketing is also advertising.

Thank you Waldemar Łasica

Can I count your response as affirmative?

Yes, it is all about customer value and marketing adds value.

Thank you Stephen I. Ternyik

Thank you for your time and contribution Afraa Ibrahim

Marketing only adds value if the company has a good product (or good service) to offer on the market.

Thank you Gioacchino de Candia for the qualified response.In your opinion, what is marketing and what is not marketing? In other words, what is marketing' s scope of activities?

Yes, the market is the ultimate customer. This should be well understood by everyone working on any product. Marketing specialists serve as a conduit in relaying market trends, demands and changing customer desires and needs back to the design and manufacturing teams. Market driven changes need to be incorporated into the company's philosophy and the company must be flexible so as not to lose its competitive edge and succeed

Thank you for a detailed response Srini Vasan . "Marketing specialists are the conduit..."

Certainly yes. Marketing should act as a link between the brand and the consumers wants and needs. By understanding what is important, what adds value to the customer and what creates a positive experience, a brand can become successful.

Thank you for your time and contribution Sandra Pestar Bizjak

The value add is to the consumer. Did I understand you correctly?

Kheepe Lawrence Moremi if there is no value for the consumer, then they are not buying your brand- then there is no value for the company either.

Thank you for clarifying Sandra Pestar Bizjak . Much appreciated.

There are various phases in a company/product life cycle. Each phase has its own challenge in whatever one defines as "marketing". Moreover there is something like "sustainable entrepreneurship 21st century". The first question that arises is "what do you, Kheepe Lawrence Moremi, consider as marketing?", the entire positioning process or just the communication part? I personally consider marketing as part of the entrepreneurial (not just business) DNA, not just a staff function. Then the marketing relates to the way a company symbiotically relates to its markets by producing genuin multilayered value while receiving income, loyalty and recognition in return. Within the business metamorphoses from just financial profit focus to 4 x profit (value for the customer, value for the environment, value for society and financial value for continuity and growth) the concept of marketing has evolved into societal ecosystem engagement and adaptation rather than the old image polishing of a company/product. As to your question: yes, it does for the short and long term, if a company understands what marketing is in the proper societal ecological economical context. Else it is just a cost.

Is your submission Jean-Paul Close that marketing adds value to; 1) customer; 2) environment; 3) society and; 4) financial value?

This is a submission placed in context Kheepe Lawrence Moremi as "marketing" is semantics with many different connotations just like words such as "economics" or "sustainability". First we need to agree on the context. My contribution is requiring the addition of the 21st century "4 x profit" entrepreneurship, or Pyramid Paradigm to value its format of marketing. Only within this context I can be affirmative to your summarized sentence.

Thank you for your time and contribution Jean-Paul Close . Stay blessed.

It is indeed the job of marketing to project the firm, its products and services(in this case, the brand) as being valuable to the people, be they current or potential customers. Things of value are things customers are willing to sacrifice their hard earned resources for. Things of value must not only be need/want satisfying but must be seen to be so by the customer/market. Perception is reality, in this case. It is the duty of marketing to influence how the market perceive the brand. Firms do not perform all marketing functions equally, and these differences in marketing ability of firms manifests in their different valuations.

Thank you for a detailed response Kennedy Nwagwu

Yes, because marketing indeed is about satisfaction and value add

You are welcome

Thank you for your time and contribution Obabuike Ikeni Nkpurukwe

Marketing is essential because companies are usually controlled by people who specialize in what they produce, and who do not have specific training to understand the market, the consumer and how to serve them.

Thank you for your time and contribution Roberto - Minadeo

Yes indeed

Thank you for your time Shuhairimi Bin Abdullah

Kheepe, although the marketing function and marketeers in general have tasked themselves or have been tasked with promoting the unique selling points of companies' products and services, such a function has attracted the research and professional interests of Behavioural and Work Psychologists, Organisational Behaviour experts, culture enthusiasts, Economists, to name but a few. An interesting cross-disciplinary topic.

Thank you for the detailed response and additional insights John Mendy

Should I assume that your response is "affirmative?"

I do hope you take my comments in the best way, but your question does not reflect an extensive marketing literature that has not been examined. Marketing does add value to an organization internally and externally. In the former case, there is an important literature that provides an "asset value" to customers, especially loyal customers. The external value has been the subject of extensive work which although may seem dated still is valued. Go back and examine: Stewart and Dewhurst, Does Distribution Cost Too Much? 1938; Barger, Distribution's Place in the American Economy since 1869, 1955; Cox, et al., Distribution in a High Level Economy, 1965. Once you have read, not just examined, these you should have a different question to ask. I am sorry to be hard on you but you have not done your homework!

By the way I just did a brief review of the contents of the JOURNAL OF MARKETiNG and THE JOURNAL OF MACROMARKETING and there are numbers of articles that also have looked at this. One of the great pieces is Lunday 1950. How Many Gasoline Stations are Too Many? Cox and Alderson, Theory in Marketing 1950.

I hope you take this in the way I meant it and good luck.

Thank you for your time and contribution to the discussion Ronald Savitt . I am assuming that your response is that "marketing does add value." Is this correct?

For the sake of the discussion and its ends, what marketing "predictor and response variables" did the studies that you refer to investigate?

You are welcome and as an economist that marketing does add value. You need to examine the studies I suggested. It is more than I want to do and I have done that years ago. It is only value if YOU look at them yourself. I hope this does not sound unhelpful but examining fundamental documents falls on your shoulders.

Ronald Savitt

Thank you once again for enriching the discussion. I will go through the literature . This is the sole reason for asking the question and no other.

Please see an excerpt from the rationale for the question, in case you missed some nuances.

"I am however, interested in "value and valuation" of a functional discipline, Marketing.

The function has been under scrutiny for some time. The big question that most people ask is whether marketing adds value in an organisation.

I would like hear your genuine views on this topic. Do you believe that marketing adds value or not? If it does, in what way do you think it does.

Thank you in advance for your time and contribution.

NB: You do not have to be a marketing person or to have worked in a "corporate environment" to participate. I am more interested in your views, based on what you know, see or have heard."

Thank you once again, stay blessed and promote peace.

Marketing is the most important subject for business. Marketing starts at the time when the product does not even exists. It covers the process from initial research till the post sale service. How can anybody dare to ask a question like this? It definetely add value and support the whole process.

Definitely it does add value. Marketing is necessary for both products and services. For products it's required for positioning it properly in market and later for it's promotion where as it terms of services internal marketing is necessary for communication among employees of company transparency and other matters

Thank you for your time and contribution Qurat Ul Ain and Asif Ali . Much appreciated.

Yes marketing can provide data on consumer preferences and authentic digital engagement. It has the power to connect consumers with social listening with implications for change and product improvement! Shirley Ezell University of Houston

Thank you fr your time and contribution Shirley Ezell

Much appreciated.

Marketing does add value. take time and think of any single activity in a business organization that brings in revenue. it turns out to be marketing , the rest consume revenue. For business firms to exist they need a market and good knowledge of that market.

Also, understanding market environment that a firm depends on can be done well by the marketing department as first, the marketers come into contact in some way (physical or virtual) with customers, potential customers, intermediaries and retailers and may develop a better understanding of them than anyone else in the firm.

Second, marketers have two dedicated tools i.e. marketing intelligence and marketing research that enable them to generate valuable information about the market. With this knowledge they are well leveraged to compete favourably.

Thank you for your time and contribution Hillary Oundo Busolo

Without a doubt it adds value (if used effectively)

Thank you for your time and contribution Kaukab Abid Azhar

Much appreciated.

Marketing adds value to organization for sure. What is the interest of producing goods or services for organization when it does not comunicate, distribute, promote, etc it. Marketing serves as intermediary between customer and oraganization. Better marketing is used, profitable is the organization.

Thank you for your time and contribution Niyungeko Antoine

Thank you to all of those who took part in this discussion thread. Kaukab Abid Azhar Niyungeko Antoine Hillary Oundo Busolo Shirley Ezell Qurat Ul Ain John Mendy Asif Ali Ronald Savitt Roberto - Minadeo Shuhairimi Bin Abdullah

The overall consensus is that marketing does indeed add value.

Thank you to all of those who took part in this discussion thread. Kaukab Abid Azhar Niyungeko Antoine Hillary Oundo Busolo Shirley Ezell Qurat Ul Ain John Mendy Asif Ali Ronald Savitt Roberto - Minadeo Shuhairimi Bin Abdullah

The overall consensus is that marketing does indeed add value.

Marketing adds value to the company by bringing it closer to the market and to consumers - an increasingly difficult task due to the rapid change in behavior and increased competition

Thank you Roberto - Minadeo

I believe that marketing is a very important branch of science, like economics, trade, management, and finance. After all, marketing is the basis of trade. Markieting is used in every industry.

Thank you Waldemar Łasica

yes it does

marketing can bring big for the company by giving them a value to classify them in the showbiz all depends of course on the capital of the company and the actions on the stock market

Thank you Joan Nyika and Djemli Samir for your time and contribution.

A time will come soon when the word 'marketing' will be replaced by "Integrated Marketing". By "Integrated Marketing" what I mean is that marketing combines marketing, HRM, Finance, Operations etc. I have personally worked in education for 11 years. Each and every person in an educational institution is a marketing personnel. The HR manager is also helping in developing the business as much as the Marketing manager is. Their perspectives are different. The marketing manager is tapping the customers and clients and thus, contributing towards business development. The HR manager is devising policies that will keep people happy in the organization. These happy faces are a great advertisement. Thus, the HR manager is also in a way a business manager. So anybody and everybody in an organization are marketing personnel and business personnel. Hence, they are surely adding values by fetching business. So to answer your question, yes, marketing adds values, when it is looked at as integrated marketing.

Thank you for the detailed response Anamitra Roy

My dear colleagues, let's get back to the basic. In economics, we know there are four types of utility, i.e. form, time, place and possession. Utility indicates total satisfaction we experience from consuming a good or service. Marketing, as a function, particularly provides or improves place utility of a good or service. This means marketing makes a good or service available or accessible to consumers. By functioning so, marketing adds value to the good or service. When marketing improves availability or accessibility of the good or service by means of new invention for instance, marketing adds more value.

Thank you Yudhi Dharma Nauly for a considered response. You are correct, Marketing adds value, in the "product market" and also in "capital markets." I guess you could also add a "spillover into labour markets."

Most of the academic and practitioner debates and controversies have centred on Marketing's impact on profitability and shareholder value. There is generally one or two mediating variables between the marketing "independent variable" and the "profitability or shareholder" dependent variables that makes relationships not "too obvious." Lots of studies have been conducted however, in the past 12 years or so, that make the linkages a bit more obvious.

Marketing really adds value to product - goods and services. Manufacturer and producer of goods and services are interested in selling their products in order to satisfy their purposes of producing those products, (although the purpose is not limited to pecuniary interest, that is, generating income and making profit which is highly related to value that is our focus in this context). But sale of produced or product cannot take place unless end users of the products are fully aware of their availability - name, type, function, quality, quantity, durability, where, when and how it can be acquired, price, etc. This very knowledge of their availability is brought to the awareness of the users of the products by Marketing process in form of advertisement of any kind. Thus, marketing facilitates transmission of knowledge of the product availability to the users who eventually go ahead to buy or get the products and satisfy their demands or needs. This is a unique value on its own. Otherwise, the products would just rot away in the warehouse or store or wherever they are kept which is a de-service to production, advertisement, transportation and consumption and in short economics and commerce. Non-existence of marketing process would impact heavily on human needs and satisfaction, health and welfare and longevity of life. Thus, marketing really adds value. It is a link between production and consumption. It aids human welfare.

Thank you for a detailed response Mikail Olaniran . Much appreciated. You view is in line with everyone who took part in the thread thus far.

I completely agree with you, there are various mediating variables between marketing as the independent variable and shareholder value as the dependent variable. In a simple way, for instance, marketing increases sales, which means more products or services sold, which in turn increases revenue and lower variable cost, which eventually raises profits.

Nonetheless when we jump into the market, we see that marketing strategies of a company is considered a threat by the rivals. They respond by launching counter strategies to protect their market shares. In the end, all companies spend a lot of money on marketing cost without changing any market share. This way, marketing which is earlier deemed as value creator, ends up as burden for the whole industry. At least, that's what prisoner's dilemma taught us.

Thank you Yudhi Dharma Nauly for your time and contribution. Earlier studies, basing their research on PIMS databases also arrived at conclusions that have some commonalities with the point that you have raised.

Shopping has a great effect on motivating companies to produce everything new

Thank you Yousif Yaqoob Shahtha for your time and contribution

Thank you to all those who took part in this thread; Yousif Yaqoob Shahtha Yudhi Dharma Nauly Anamitra Roy Mikail Olaniran Waldemar Łasica Djemli Samir Joan Nyika

Your contributions enriched the discussion and my perspective.

I thing yes>

Thank you for your time and contribution Mohamad Abdulhai

We launched in 2012 a private label UHT milk. It was viewed as a commodity, so it would only sell on price. The biggest retailer decided to spend money ("adspend") on marketing and selling, the product sales increased to be the market leader (volume and value) within a year. It is today even more profitable, covering most of the business's costs, by far the market leader.

We saw that when we launched our own brand afterwards,(we could only afford limited marketing) it was a minimal fraction of the highly marketed product. (both the same product in different labelled packages).

I have the figures and values if we can share confidentially.

Yes x 10 for marketing.

Thank you for your considered response Hendrik Kleynhans . Much appreciated.

Thank you for your time and response Hermann Gruenwald . Are you saying that "marketing adds value because it develops and builds some critical market assets, brand equity being one of them?