Philip Kotler Quotes

Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value.

The sales department isn’t the whole company, but the whole company better be the sales department.

The art of marketing is the art of brand building. If you arenot a brand, you are a commodity. Then price is everything and the low-cost producer is the only winner.

The best advertising is done by satisfied customers.

Marketing takes a day to learn. Unfortunately, it takes a lifetime to master.

Authentic marketing is not the art of selling what you make but knowing what to make. It is the art of identifying and understanding customer needs and creating solutions that deliver satisfaction to the customers, profits to the producers and benefits for the stakeholders.

There is only one winning strategy. It is to carefully define the target market and direct a superior offering to that target market.

It is no longer enough to satisfy your customers. You must delight them.

It is more important to do what is strategically right than what is immediately profitable.

Over the past 60 years, marketing has moved from being product-centric (Marketing 1.0) to being consumer-centric (Marketing 2.0). Today we see marketing as transforming once again in response to the new dynamics in the environment. We see companies expanding their focus from products to consumers to humankind issues. Marketing 3.0 is the stage when companies shift from consumer-centricity to human-centricity and where profitability is balanced with corporate responsibility.

The successful salesperson cares first for the customer, second for the products.

Companies pay too much attention to the cost of doing something. They should worry more about the cost of not doing it.

The most important thing is to forecast where customers are moving, and be in front of them.

Good companies will meet needs; great companies will create markets.

Poor firms ignore their competitors; average firms copy their competitors; winning firms lead their competitors.

Marketing is a race without a finishing line

Every business is a service business. Does your service put a smile on the customer's face?

The best way to hold customers is to constantly figure out how to give them more for less.

The future isn’t ahead of us. It has already happened.

Today's smart marketers don't sell products; they sell benefit packages. They don't sell purchase value only; they sell use value.

The key to branding, especially for smaller firms, is to focus on a limited number of issue areas and develop superb expertise in those areas.

Watch the product life cycle; but more important, watch the market life cycle.

Strategy is indeed about choosing what not to do as well as what to do. A business unit needs to decide what need it aims to satisfy in what group of people and with what value proposition that distinguishes the business from its competitors.

Today you have to run faster to stay in place.

A great leader is one who surrounds himself with great people who then, collectively, innovate and implement with success. If he tries to do it all by himself, he is an egotist and likely to fail.

Every company should work hard to obsolete its own product line - before its competitors do.

Good customers are an asset which, when wellmanaged and served, will return a handsome lifetime income stream for the company.

The theory of marketing is solid but the practice of marketing leaves much to be desired.

Integrated marketing communications is a way of looking at the whole marketing process from the view point of the customer.

Marketing is becoming a battle based on information than on sales power.

Authentic marketing is not the art of selling what you make but knowing what to make!

Competitive advantage is a companys ability to perform in one or more ways that competitors cannot or will not match.

Marketing is the set of human activities directed at facilitating and consummating exchanges.

When managers overdo micromanaging of others, they probably hired the wrong people or failed to give them a clear idea of what each one is to accomplish. I prefer to train employees to be self-managers, just as in an orchestra each performer knows his or her role without being micromanaged.

There is no such thing as a commodity. It is simply a product waiting to be differentiated.

Don’t buy market share. Figure out how to earn it.

Your company does not belong inmarkets where it cannot be the best.

Whenever someone wonders how I could have written 57 books, I remind them that Isaac Asimov wrote 500 books. I like Asimov's view that great insight comes from seeing something as odd and finding out why. Curiosity is the starting point for great science.

The internet will create the winnerand bury the laggards.

One of the major causes of poverty is a lack of family planning. Governments and nonprofit organizations need to encourage poor people to use birth control so that they don't have unexpected babies, which will only make poorer families poorer.

I believe in the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profits. I would make sure to hire the best people and pay them more than my competitors. I would encourage their participation in decision making and hope that they can feel free to disagree with me.

When it comes to efficiency and effectiveness, I would always start with effectiveness. I am interested in achieving a certain outcome. Only secondarily do I worry about achieving it as efficiently as possible.

My primary early interest was in marketing and my aim was to improve its theories, methods and tools. Early on I pressed companies to adopt a consumer orientation and to be in the value creation business. I didn't pay much attention to the social responsibilities of business until later. Now I am pressing companies to address the triple bottom line: people, the planet, and profits. I found that companies were too much into short term profit maximization and they needed to invest more in sustainability thinking.

Great insight comes from seeing something as odd and finding out why.

I admire firms that have achieved a real differentiation from their competitors. Nike is all about mastering sports. Apple is all about creating technologies to make life easier and better. Audi is is all about introducing new technologies to make automobiles safer and better performing.

There are times when a market such as housing, transportation or the stock or mortgage market keep rising and people with capital want to join in this growth. Soon the markets become overheated, partly because of the abundance of investment money and speculation. This is when the government should raise interest rates and increase the cost of borrowed money. Governments are shy about doing this because it could cause the very recession. Yet this is the best time to do this so that the inevitable recession never reaches the magnitude of the recent Great Recession.

The key solution is to invest in innovation and entrepreneurship within the company. Reducing waste - although probably not eliminating it - and do so at all levels of government would probably generate the capital needed. Alas, that will probably not happen because it makes too much sense.

We should tax every company's carbon footprint and the carbon footprint of every building and home, to incentivize people to reduce their carbon footprint.

People are more comfortable with the familiar. It takes selling a big dream that comes with excellent income possibility to get someone to leave his or her comfort zone.

The CEO announces that the purpose of the firm is to improve the lives of the customers and the lives of the firm's stakeholders and the quality of the planet. The company will give fair compensation to all the stakeholders and the CEO will not earn more than 20 times the median income of his employees. He will want his employees to rate him, just as he also has to rate them.