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EBR
19,2 How Philip Kotler has helped to
shape the field of marketing
Maureen A. Bourassa, Peggy H. Cunningham and
174 Jay M. Handelman
School of Business, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

Abstract
Purpose – Philip Kotler is one of the pioneers who has contributed to the broadening of academic
inquiry in the field of marketing. He has had a significant role in shaping how marketing is taught to
and practised by students and managers of marketing. By examining the personal and
macroenvironmental influences that have come to shape his work, this paper seeks to explore how
Philip Kotler has achieved such influence in the field of marketing.
Design/methodology/approach – The research was driven by a desire to understand the context
in which Kotler developed his work, including the personal influences on his life as well as the
macroenvironmental forces within which his work has emerged. To this end, the reseaerch employed
qualitative techniques to analyze a number of data sources including depth interviews with Philip
Kotler and nine of his colleagues, participant observation at Kotler’s 75th birthday celebration hosted
by the Kellogg School, a review of marketing textbooks, and a review of relevant literature.
Findings – The research reveals the keys to Philip Kotler’s success are his ability to learn from the
people around him and the events of the times, and his ability to integrate this knowledge into
succinct, well-communicated, timely lessons for others to follow. Kotler’s work emerged within a
period of time that has witnessed a thrust towards marketing as a science and the rise of the
managerial school of thought. Given this context, the significance of Kotler’s work is that it has
contributed to the legitimacy of the field of marketing as both a rigorous academic discipline and a
managerial domain of strategic importance within organizations.
Practical implications – Gaining an understanding of Philip Kotler and his work contributes to our
understanding of how the marketing field has been shaped, including the kinds of academic inquiry
marketers deem legitimate and the nature of how we teach students to practice marketing
management.
Originality/value – Little attention has been paid to the factors that have influenced the work of
Philip Kotler and how he has, in turn, come to shape the field of marketing. This research allows the
reader to see the man behind the work and the influences on his thinking.
Keywords Marketing theory, Management theory, Education
Paper type General review

The rest is history. You worked with a great group who understood how marketing was
taught at the time, and you had a vision of how marketing should be taught. Your book
continues to this day as a beacon that illuminates marketing concepts around the world
(Donald P. Jacobs, Dean Emeritus, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University,
2006).

The authors would like to thank the editors and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful
comments and support. They are grateful to Philip Kotler, who opened his home and library to
European Business Review
Vol. 19 No. 2, 2007 one of the authors. The authors also wish to thank all the informants who participated in this
pp. 174-192 research and who shared their time and their thoughts. They thank the Social Sciences and
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0955-534X
Humanities Research Council of Canada for providing funding that assisted in the completion of
DOI 10.1108/09555340710730128 this research.
Few in the marketing discipline, whether they be academics or practitioners, would Philip Kotler
deny that Philip Kotler has played a dominant role in shaping the way researchers and
practitioners think about and view the field of marketing both in North America and
around the world. In fact, Kotler is revered in many countries. An Indian newspaper
article written by Dr Bala V. Balachandran about an upcoming visit by Kotler to India
referred to him both as “the Messiah of Marketing” and the “Father of Marketing.” In
other parts of Asia, he is described as a “superstar.” In Indonesia, his image appears on 175
two postage stamps. When speaking at a conference in the 1970s in Italy, managers
interrupted their summer holidays and left their families just for a chance to hear
Kotler speak (Guido, 2006).
One example of how Kotler has helped to shape the marketing field is his 1969
Journal of Marketing publication (Kotler and Levy, 1969), in which he and Sidney Levy
proposed expanding the tools and activities of marketing beyond for-profit
applications to the marketing of non-profit organizations, ideas, and people. This
notion of “broadening the concept of marketing,” though not without criticism (Luck,
1969), has had an enormous impact on the field. Kotler also has an established
reputation as a prolific book writer. As of July 2006, he had authored or co-authored 43
books including: Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning and Control (with
editions in French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Chinese,
Finnish, Indonesian, Turkish, Hebrew, and Slovenian); Marketing Decision Making: A
Model Building Approach; Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations (Kotler, 1975);
Strategic Marketing for Educational Institutions (Kotler and Fox, 1985); High Visibility:
The Making and Marketing of Professionals into Celebrities (Kotler et al., 1987) (the
third edition was retitled High Visibility: Transforming Your Personal and Professional
Brand ); The Marketing of Nations (Kotler et al., 1997); Museum Strategies and
Marketing: Designing the Mission, Building Audiences, Increasing Financial Resources
(Kotler and Kotler, 1998); Repositioning Asia: From Bubble to Sustainable Economy
(Kotler and Kartajaya, 2000); and Corporate Social Responsibility: Doing the Most Good
for Your Company and Your Cause (Kotler and Lee, 2005).
Despite Kotler’s popularity, his work has occasionally been viewed in a negative
light. Some believe that his approach has oversimplified the way we think about
marketing. Others suggest that Kotler’s influence has been too dominant (Brown,
2002a). These criticisms only serve to highlight the important and unique impact
Kotler has had on our field. The nature of Kotler’s contributions goes well beyond
insights into specific dimensions and topics of marketing. Through “Broadening the
Concept of Marketing,” Kotler contributed to a conceptual foundation upon which a
wide range of inquiry previously not imagined in our field could be explored. And
through the success of his textbooks, Kotler has come to shape how marketing is
taught to and practiced by new generations of students and managers. The purpose of
this paper is to explore how Kotler has achieved such influence and to consider in more
detail the nature of his contribution to the field of marketing. In exploring this topic, we
asked: What are the personal and macroenvironmental forces that have influenced his
work? What skills has he employed? What criticisms have been leveled against his
work? Through such an analysis, what can we learn about the nature of his
contribution to the field of marketing?
The underlying premise of this paper is that marketing, like any other field of study,
is essentially comprised of the people within it. It therefore follows that we can better
EBR understand our field by understanding the key figures who have shaped it. This is
19,2 what Bartels (1988) labels “The Personal Dimension” – the extent to which the
character of marketing thought has been determined by the subjective influences on
researchers’ viewpoints.
The organization of this paper is as follows. First, we describe our source materials
and method of analysis. Second, the key themes that resulted from the interviews and
176 the literature review are presented. These findings are organized into four sections that
detail the personal and macroenvironmental forces shaping Kotler’s work, and the
context and content of Kotler’s famed textbook, Marketing Management. Third, we
explore reactions to Kotler’s work. Fourth, the discussion section explores the idea of
Kotler as a force that has lent legitimacy to marketing as a field of rigorous scientific
inquiry and a managerial domain of strategic importance within the firm. A conclusion
summarizes the findings and the results.

Source material and analysis

Our data sources included personal interviews, literature reviews, textbook reviews,
and participant observation at Kotler’s 75th birthday celebration hosted by the Kellogg
School in the summer of 2006. Having an opportunity to engage in interviews and
conversations with Philip Kotler and with his colleagues about the focal researcher’s
contributions, how they came about, and why they are important to the field has
facilitated the creation of a living history. As a living history, this paper is not a final
piece. Kotler continues to be an active scholar and has numerous projects underway.
Thus, the assessment of his work and its impact needs to be on-going.
We gathered our data over a period of five years. In December 2001, one researcher
did an extensive review of Kotler’s personal collection, interviewed him in his private
library, and observed him as he went about his work. Kotler believes his private
collection is the only complete collection of his works. During this time, a posting was
placed on the ELMAR list (Electronic Marketing, a listserv) requesting comments and
insights on Kotler’s contribution to marketing. These comments were analyzed using
qualitative analysis techniques.
In 2004, another researcher conducted a total of ten interviews, one with Kotler and
nine with Kotler’s colleagues. A majority of the interviews were conducted by
telephone; only one was conducted electronically (i.e. an e-mail dialogue of questions
and answers). The interviews followed an open-ended style, with interview guides
providing a framework for the discussion. In some cases, not all questions could be
covered due to time constraints or the informant’s inability to respond; in other cases,
questions were explored in great depth. The interview guides are included in the
Appendix. Notes were taken at the time of the interviews and were later recorded
electronically. Interview notes were reviewed and interpreted by two researchers and
common themes were identified. Because we recorded interview notes rather than
verbatim transcripts, it is not always possible to include direct quotations in this work.
Throughout this paper, the participants will be referred to as informants. The term
“informants” is commonly used in the marketing literature to refer to participants in
interview processes (Belk et al., 1989; Fournier, 1998).
In addition, the researchers reviewed the academic literature, book reviews
published in the Journal of Marketing, and key marketing management textbooks
published in and around the 1960s.
Findings: themes from interviews, literature reviews, and participant Philip Kotler
observation
In this section, we seek to understand the forces that have shaped Kotler’s work.
Specifically, we consider personal forces such as Kotler’s training and personality, as
well as the macroenvironmental context within which Kotler worked. Then, we explore
one of Kotler’s important contributions, Marketing Management, as an example of how
the personal and macroenvironmental forces influenced Kotler’s thought. 177
Personal forces shaping Kotler’s work
As stated in the introduction, our work is a reminder that academic research involves
real people. It is therefore important to begin by describing Kotler’s training and
personality, because this has played an important role in shaping his work. We don’t
present all aspects of Kotler as a person, but instead present only those facets our
informants noted.
Kotler and his three brothers grew up in an apartment in Chicago. His parents ran a
small retail establishment. Kotler was an avid reader from a young age. His brother Neil
noted, “Family lore has it that Phil, at an early age, read and memorized the dictionary,
seated under the kitchen table, the center of social activity” (Neil Kotler, 2006). Kotler
obtained his degrees from renowned institutions. He earned his Masters in economics
from the University of Chicago and his PhD in economics from MIT as a student of
Nobel-laureate Paul Samuelson. In 1962, he joined Northwestern University, later named
Kellogg School of Management. As Sydney Levy noted, “We hired him because he was
obviously smart . . . Also, he was clearly a sweet guy. Then, in short-order, he wrote a
marketing textbook that took him to the top of the field” (Levy, 2006).
According to Kotler, other leading academics were also members of the Northwestern
faculty during this early period of his career. Richard Clewett was well-known in
channels research. Harper Boyd and Ralph Westfall were publishing case books and
marketing research texts, and Sidney Levy was developing a reputation for work in
consumer behaviour and brand image. As Kotler noted, “Sid Levy opened my eyes to the
applicability of marketing theory beyond goods and commercial services.” Clearly,
Kotler was stimulated by and fit in well with colleagues known for their innovation in
the field of management education. Kotler noted, “The book writing tradition of the
Northwestern marketing faculty had a strong influence on me.”
Since 1970, the Kellogg School has focused exclusively on graduate and executive
education and life-long learning. According to Ralph Westfall (2006), a former
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Kellogg School, shortly after Kotler joined
Northwestern, the School transformed itself from a school of business administration
to a school of management. The driving force behind this change was the belief that
management was a process that applied to all types of organizations – business and
non-business, public and private, for-profit and non-profit. Clearly Kotler influenced
and was influenced by this thinking. In addition, Northwestern draws 30 percent of its
students from other countries, and as a result, Kotler was constantly exposed to a
range of ideas and perspectives. Kotler is one of the few professors (other than Deans)
mentioned on the School’s list of Initiatives, Innovations, and Awards.
Being part of The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University
certainly added to Kotler’s brand credibility. Founded in 1908, Northwestern describes
itself as a world-renowned research-based institution. In 1988, when BusinessWeek
EBR magazine began its biennial ranking survey, the Kellogg School was placed in the
19,2 number one spot a record five times, in 1988, 1990, 1992, 2002, and 2004.
Adding to Kotler’s credibility was his outstanding publication record. Early in his
career, his work was published in a diverse set of top-tier journals. Between 1963 and
1972, the same period during which he wrote the first two editions of Marketing
Management, he published four articles in the Journal of Marketing, one article in the
178 Journal of Marketing Research, four articles in the Harvard Business Review, one article
in Management Science, one article in the Journal of Advertising Research, and one
article in the California Management Review, among others. These articles won
numerous prestigious awards including the 1964 MacLaren Advertising Research
Award, the McKinsey Award for the second best article for the year 1964-1965, and
two Alpha Kappa Psi Foundation Awards for the best article in the Journal of
Marketing in 1971 and 1972. As one informant specifically noted, the number and
breadth of these articles not only earned him respect as an academic, but they also built
the legitimacy for his textbook and for his position as a thought leader.
Kotler’s training is not the only aspect of Kotler’s person that impacts on his work; his
personality is also telling. Numerous people have commented on how keenly interested
Kotler is in others, and have noted that when Kotler listens to you, there is a sense that
you are the only person in the room. He questions and probes and solicits ideas of interest
from people in every walk of life and from every nationality. One person called him
“indiscriminant,” noting that he finds everyone interesting. Another noted that he has
the incredible ability to draw the best out in people. Kotler’s colleagues told stories, in the
interviews and at his birthday celebration, about how Kotler would pull out a pen and
paper in mid-conversation to jot down notes about something that someone had said.
Using these notes, Kotler would expand and elaborate upon intriguing ideas until they
emerged as important concepts and sometimes counterintuitive concepts (like
demarketing) that eventually made their way into one of his textbooks. Our
informants told stories about how he is sincerely interested in diverse perspectives, and
how he observes the world through reading and conversation. According to the
informants who participated in this research, Kotler is a “wonderer” and a “sponge” who
has a “huge absorptive capacity” and can soak up everything around him. Kotler admits
that he has an appreciation for learning and applying problems to new areas.
Kotler is not only a “listener” and a “wonderer,” but also an exceptional
communicator. One informant noted his desire to emulate Kotler’s effective public
presentation style. Other informants commended Kotler’s ability to make complex
phenomena appear simple to an audience. In classical music, it is a great compliment
for a performer to hear that he or she has made a very difficult piece sound simple. In
marketing, it appears to be no different.
The fact that Kotler is keenly interested in the world implies that he can effectively
collect information from a diverse and varied set of sources, cultures, and phenomena.
His talent at communicating with audiences means that he can effectively disseminate
information. In other words, Kotler’s personality and skills are important factors in
explaining how he arrives at his contributions and why they are perceived as successful.

Macroenvironmental forces that shaped Kotler’s work

At the same time Kotler began his career, a number of changes were taking place in the
field of marketing and marketing education. The influential Ford and Carnegie
Foundation reports pushed for more integration of various disciplines into business Philip Kotler
education; they were highly critical of the fact that marketing had, in the past, been so
descriptive. The Ford Foundation specifically argued for a greater emphasis on
economics, mathematics, and behavioural sciences (Ford Foundation, 1967). Kotler,
given his educational background in economics and behavioural sciences, was well
poised to address the shortcomings of the discipline as described in the Ford and
Carnegie Foundation reports. The Ford Foundation set up a competition to identify 50 179
candidates to fill a year-long class in mathematics. People chosen for the program were
those viewed as being able to create the momentum toward improving management
education. Donald P. Jacobs, Dean Emeritus, Kellogg School of Management,
Northwestern University and Philip Kotler were chosen as members of the class, and
this is where they met for the first time (Jacobs, 2006).
Kotler’s conceptualization and integration ability were especially important during
the 1960s. The field of marketing grew rapidly from 1950 to 1970. Membership in the
American Marketing Association, for example, grew fivefold from 3,800 to 18,380
members during this period. Moreover, according to Bartels (1988), the field was
re-appraised to address new needs for marketing knowledge and reconceptualized to
emphasize managerial decision making, the societal aspects of marketing, and
qualitative marketing analysis.
The Ford and Carnegie Foundation program and reports, along with other factors,
led to the rise in the managerial school. Being surrounded by such a movement in the
field surely influenced the way Kotler thought about marketing. Our literature review
suggests that in his early years, he struggled with how “marketing” should be defined
and whether this concept was distinct from or the same as “marketing management.”
In the first edition of his Marketing Management textbook, Kotler defined
marketing as analysis, planning, and control – in other words, he seems to have
equated marketing with marketing management (Kotler, 1967). In a later journal
article, he did not provide any definition for marketing, explained only that it
encompassed the concept of exchange, and went on instead to clearly define marketing
management (Kotler and Zaltman, 1971). By the second edition of Marketing
Management in 1972, Kotler was able to clearly distinguish between marketing and
marketing management: “Marketing is the set of human activities directed at
facilitating and consummating exchanges” (Kotler, 1972, p. 12); and “Marketing
management is the analysis, planning, implementation, and control of programs
designed to bring about desired exchanges with target audiences for the purpose of
personal or mutual gain. It relies heavily on the adaptation and coordination of
product, price, promotion, and place for achieving effective response” (Kotler, 1972,
p. 13).
Not only were marketing academics in the 1960s pressured to be more managerially
relevant, but they were also pushed to prove marketing’s status as a science. As Kotler
noted, his aim over the last 30 years “has been to promote marketing as a science and to
explain how the marketplace really works by giving real-life texture to the theories of
economists” (Kellogg World, 2001). There is other evidence that Kotler has worked to
promote marketing as a science. Kotler’s textbook on marketing models (Kotler, 1971)
brings with it the assumption that marketing can be approached in a rational and
“scientific” fashion. In the preface to that book, Kotler wrote, “The present book seeks
to construct a systematic and self-contained theory of marketing analysis and decision
EBR making” (p. vi). One informant reinforced this view, noting that the value of creating
19,2 marketing models, in part, was in helping the field to be perceived as more scientific. In
one edition of Marketing Management, Kotler specifically defines marketing as “the
scientific study of exchange relationships” (Kotler, 1972, p. 1).
There is evidence that Kotler sought to associate marketing with science as a way of
gaining legitimacy or credibility for marketing as a rigorous academic discipline.
180 Kotler has justified the use of mathematics in marketing management as a way to
reduce the “mysticism” associated with marketing (Kotler, 1963). In other words,
rational/scientific approaches would be a way to increase the clarity and legitimacy of
marketing. In a paper on the role of computers in marketing, Kotler clearly states that
the development of marketing models (i.e. rational, systematic approaches to
addressing marketing issues) allows marketing to command a greater level of respect
(Kotler, 1970).
The history of marketing reveals a scientific pursuit to create a general theory of
marketing (see Alderson, 1965; Bagozzi, 1975; Bartels, 1968; Hunt, 1971). Kotler was
also driven by this pursuit. In an interview conducted as part of this research, Kotler
was asked which academic article he was most proud of and why. He says that “A
generic concept of marketing” (Kotler, 1967) is his favourite. According to Kotler, every
field needs a foundation and the idea proposed in “A generic concept of marketing”
was that “exchange” should form the foundation or core of marketing.
Despite Kotler’s scientific pursuits, he is not generally regarded as an empiricist. In
an address to Kotler during the 2006 birthday celebration held at Kellogg,
Louis W. Stern described Kotler’s career as evolving through three stages: quantitative
research in his early years, application of marketing thought to a wide range of
problems and organizations in his middle years, and a focus on policy in his later years.
A number of other informants commented that they have never known Kotler to
conduct empirical research. In a 1979 article, Stern noted that some of Kotler’s
management theories were only hypotheses drawn from a variety of disciplines that
had not been operationalised and tested (Stern, 1979). A review of Kotler’s literature is
objective evidence that he does not publish empirical studies. Instead, Kotler relies
primarily on close observation, integration, and analysis to create knowledge.
Having established the key forces that have shaped Kotler’s work, we now turn to a
depth examination of one of Kotler’s important accomplishments – his Marketing
Management textbook. We turn to an analysis of this text for several reasons: first, the
contribution made by Kotler through his text has been under researched and
appreciated; second, it provides a useful context within which to help understand
Kotler’s success; and third, it was cited by scholars commenting on Kotler’s work as a
major contribution to the field. Finally, it is one of the few marketing textbooks cited in
the scholarly work of marketing academics. By considering the context and content of
Marketing Management, we suggest Kotler’s success was facilitated by the fact that
his training and communication/integration skills fit well with the external forces and
pressures of the time.
To summarize, Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, and Control was first
published in 1967 and has seen 12 editions. The textbook is positioned as a
sophisticated tool aimed at graduate level marketing students. It has sold over three
million copies and has been translated into 20 languages. In fact, it was the first
Western marketing textbook to be translated into Russian and published in the Soviet
Union (Fox et al., 2005). Louis W. Stern (2006) described Marketing Management as the Philip Kotler
“shot heard around the world.” He contended that it forever changed the teaching and
study of marketing, that it synthesized the best work in the field of marketing and
integrated it with practice. He noted that the text was written in a fluid and compelling
way, and that it “made the practice and study of marketing interesting and
worthwhile.”
If one accepts the voice of the marketplace, this textbook has had a significant 181
impact. Given the importance of this textbook and how it has shaped teaching and
practice in the marketing discipline, the remainder of our paper will focus on this work.
As several informants noted, it epitomizes what many think of when they try to
explain Kotler’s significant additions to the field:
. . . he added rigor to thinking about marketing strategy . . .
. . . he brought structure to a field made up largely of antidotes . . .
. . . he gave people the confidence to venture beyond traditional marketing . . .
. . . he has helped to shape the domain of marketing through his conceptual frameworks and
focus . . .
. . . overall, Kotler is a great integrator . . .

The context of Marketing Management: marketing texts in the 1960s

The literature and textbook reviews, as well as the interviews, allowed us to compare
and contrast the characteristics of the first edition of Marketing Management (1967)
with other textbooks published during the same period. The informants suggested that
Kotler’s textbook was built on a foundation that had been laid by other prominent
authors, in particular Wroe Alderson, William Lazer, Robert Bartels, and John Howard
to name a few. When Kotler was asked, in an interview for this paper, what other
researchers influenced his thinking, he answered, “John Howard and Wroe Alderson.”
Pressed for details, he explained that he liked how John Howard’s mind worked, and
that he appreciated Wroe Alderson’s fresh thinking and marketing frameworks. Kotler
also mentioned Peter Drucker and Theodore Levitt (“Marketing myopia”) and their
arguments for a customer-centered approach as other influencers on his thinking.
One informant noted that McCarthy’s textbook, Basic Marketing: A Managerial
Approach, first published in 1960 with its 4Ps framework, was also written in a
managerial style similar to Kotler’s. The first edition of Marketing Management
integrated McCarthy’s framework into Part 3 of the text (chapters 13 to 19) under the
heading “Planning the Marketing Program.” The target audience for McCarthy’s
textbook, however, was students in introductory marketing courses. Kotler’s
Marketing Management, in contrast, was aimed at the graduate student market, a
segment where there was little competition. Thus, although both works were born from
the increased market demand for a more managerial approach, there was likely only
limited competition between the two works because of their distinct market positioning
strategies.
One question explored in this research was, “What features of Kotler’s textbook
gave him a competitive advantage?” Four key themes have been uncovered which we
believe allowed Kotler’s book to be seen as differentiated: first, it appeared at a time
EBR when there were many descriptive textbooks; second, it took a planning and strategy
19,2 oriented approach; third, it incorporated clear and concise models and frameworks that
lent themselves to being teachable and explainable; and fourth, it evolved to keep up
with the times.

182 The content of Marketing Management

Non-descriptive. Until the 1950s and 1960s, many marketing textbooks were rather
descriptive in nature. One informant, in comparing Kotler’s work to other books,
explained that Kotler’s was different because it was more prescriptive (normative), and
that this was accomplished by incorporating optimization strategies and economics.
Book reviews published in the Journal of Marketing from 1961 to 1971 provide
objective evidence of the trend away from descriptive approaches and towards
managerial approaches. Book reviewers described the texts that followed a descriptive
approach (i.e. institutional, functional, and/or systems approaches) as “conventional,”
“conservative” (Goldstucker, 1961), and “fragmented” (Stellmacher, 1965). The
descriptive marketing textbook market was seen as “saturated” (Engel, 1961). Some
deemed the descriptive approach to be less valuable, “ . . . the student is given the
feeling of being closer to marketing problems than in many texts directed more toward
mere [italics added] description of marketing functions and institutions” (Faville, 1963,
p. 116).
The critical tone in the book reviews of the time was often undeniable. In one book
review, it was stated that the functional and institutional approaches, in general, “. . .
may be criticized for lacking cohesion – the ‘functional,’ ‘institutional,’ and
‘commodity’ approaches, and the rest often being simply juxtaposed in successive
sections of marketing textbooks, without any real focus for the analysis. In contrast,
the ‘managerial’ approach attempts to unify these various elements by showing how
they affect the marketing manager in the firm . . . ” (Boddewyn and Berschinski, 1962,
p. 118).
In contrast, Kotler’s 1967 edition of Marketing Management was considered, in its
Journal of Marketing book review, to be valuable because it did not adhere to
traditional approaches. “A major contribution is the consistency with which the author
has maintained his focus on the management viewpoint. Typically, there is minimal
reference to the traditional treatment of marketing history and institutions . . . ” (Fox,
1967, p. 103). Kotler’s training as a behaviouralist and an economist was undoubtedly
useful in this regard. Because of his rich background in related disciplines, he was able
to integrate his understanding of how both markets and people behave to present
models and frameworks about how managers should make marketing decisions.
The fact that other textbooks in the field were quite descriptive was an inspiration
for Kotler to write textbooks. As a new instructor teaching marketing for the first time
at Northwestern’s Business School, he couldn’t find a textbook that pleased him. He
had considered not only the descriptive textbooks in the field of marketing, but also
those of his parent discipline – economics. Again, Kotler found that marketing
phenomena were oversimplified. Thus, he decided to write his own book. He began to
write Marketing Decision Making: A Model Building Approach, but at the urging of his
publisher changed course and began work on Marketing Management which was the
first of his textbooks to be published.
 Planning and strategy-oriented. The literature review revealed that a focus on Philip Kotler
planning and strategy set Kotler apart from most of the others. Like Ansoff (1965) (see
Pettigrew et al., 2002), Kotler articulated a more rationalistic and planning-oriented
view of marketing strategy. Kotler’s work caused a shift in the marketing field that
preceded the work of Schendel and Hatten (1972), who were the two authors credited
with bringing a more analytical and economics-based view to the field of strategy than
had hitherto existed. 183
The informants reinforced the notion that Kotler’s focus on strategy made him
unique. Kotler’s text discussed “strategy” in the beginning chapters, which acted as a
foundation and was linked to topics presented in later chapters. In contrast, other
textbooks discussed strategy only in the final chapters as a way of integration. One
informant explained why Kotler’s focus on strategy was significant – it communicated
to managers that marketing is important, and as a result, it changed (and elevated) the
face of marketing, because marketing was no longer just about functions. Kotler’s
ability to incorporate this planning and strategy orientation likely resulted in part from
his connectedness to the real world. He could see from his own experiences that
marketing planning and strategy were critical elements in executing a cohesive
marketing plan.
Kotler’s focus on strategy and planning became more evident over time. In his 1967
edition, Chapter 1 in Section 1 focused on marketing management and the marketing
concept, whereas discussions of planning (i.e. the 4Ps) and control did not take place
until Sections 3 and 4. It was not until his third edition in 1976 that strategy
discussions really moved to the front of the book. In this edition, Chapter 1 was titled
“Tasks and Philosophies of Marketing Management” and Chapter 3, “Strategic
Marketing.”
It is insightful to compare Kotler’s text with Howard, McCarthy, and Alderson in
this respect. John Howard’s 1957 textbook, Marketing Management: Analysis and
Decision, also highlighted the importance of marketing strategy and decision making
by placing these topics in the first two chapters. Specifically, Chapter 1 was titled
“Marketing Decisions and the Nature of Marketing Management”, and Chapter 2,
“Profit and Marketing Strategy”. McCarthy’s first edition of Basic Marketing in 1960
included no mention of marketing strategy in its table of contents, but by the fourth
edition in 1971, marketing strategy replaced the topic of marketing history in Chapter 2.
Alexander, Surface, Elder and Alderson’s 1944 edition of Marketing included an entire
section (Section 4 of 5) on “Planning Marketing Activities” (Alexander et al., 1944). This
section included chapters on a variety of planning considerations – the function of
planning, budgetary control, analysis and distribution costs, research in marketing,
and market-planning as affected by external forces. This comparison is interesting,
because it seems Kotler was not alone in his focus on strategy and planning, yet this is
noted as one feature that made him distinct. Perhaps it was Kotler’s clear and
comprehensible approach to strategy and planning that made it memorable.
Furthermore, his ability to clearly communicate his ideas helped bring them to the fore.
Models and frameworks. The interviews made it clear that Kotler’s models and
frameworks are integral to his work. It has already been suggested that Kotler has an
uncanny ability to absorb information, synthesize details, break down complex
phenomena, and communicate with clarity. Given these traits, combined with his
background in economics and modeling, it follows that Kotler was able to pull together
EBR vast quantities of marketing knowledge into useful frameworks and decision making
19,2 models. As one informant put it, Kotler gave structure to what was previously quite
unstructured.
Kotler was asked to describe how he goes about creating his popular frameworks.
Kotler explained that the integration of many fields into his textbook led to asking
questions such as, “How many salespeople should an organization have?” which in
184 turn led to the creation of frameworks to provide an answer. This process is highly
dependent on an ability to be observant, to have familiarity with and insight into actual
business practice, and to be able to see and synthesize disparate variables that might
affect a phenomenon.
Kotler’s frameworks are important not only because they make his textbook
material more approachable by students, but also because they can be taught in a clear
and organized fashion. Thus, Marketing Management quickly gained acceptance in the
marketplace by jointly serving the needs of two distinct groups: worldly-wise MBA
students who could quickly see the power of the concepts in dealing with their daily
marketing challenges, and instructors who sought leading edge, teachable material.
Keeping up with the times. How has Kotler’s book evolved over time? When one
examines the structure of the first edition of Marketing Management (600 pages, 23
chapters, first published in 1967), one is instantly struck not by how different it is from
today’s editions, but by how much has stayed the same throughout its evolution. Right
from the first edition, the core structure and many of the key concepts that characterize
marketing management today were present. The content of Kotler’s text has,
nevertheless, kept up with (and in some cases gone ahead of) the times. Kotler’s ability
to stay current is not surprising given his interest in the world and his “radar,” as one
informant termed it. Kotler’s policy is to revise at least 20 percent of the content in each
new edition. His revisions incorporate both academic and practical trends. Kotler
attributes the ongoing success of the textbook to his passion for ideas and his
determination to offer something fresh with each new edition.
While many of the things present in the first edition would remain foundational
over the years, the second edition (880 pages and eight new chapters) also had some
unique aspects. This second edition incorporated Kotler’s academic contributions in
applying marketing concepts to non-profit organizations as well as ideas and people.
While the notion of broadening the concept of marketing was by no means
well-accepted at the time, it was still included in Kotler’s book. As one informant noted,
Kotler’s approach has never been entirely “cautious,” which has benefited his texts.
The second edition marked the beginning of a tradition in which marketing practice
was embedded in a social, legal, and ethical context enabling the impact of marketing
to be better assessed.
Also in the second edition, there was no distinction between consumer behaviour
and industrial purchasing. The core concepts of marketing strategy – segmentation,
target marketing, and positioning – were absent. According to Kotler, the notion of
STP or “segmenting, targeting, and positioning” was later presented as a necessary
step before any of the 4Ps are implemented. Branding was given short shrift, but was
later added in more depth as a result of Kevin Keller and David Aaker’s academic work
in the same area. When Lynn Shostack suggested that there was a need to break free
from product marketing, Kotler included services marketing in his definition of
marketing. There was a chapter on marketing creativity that was subsequently
dropped only to return in much later versions of the textbook as innovation became Philip Kotler
increasingly important. The chapter on marketing research evolved into what is today
a chapter on the marketing information system. Kotler was among the first to
incorporate the internet and CRM (customer relationship management) into his texts in
response to current trends. When Stephen Brown published Marketing – the Retro
Revolution, which presents an alternative perspective on marketing, Kotler included
Brown’s ideas into two recent editions of Marketing Management (the 11th and 12th 185
editions). In the 11th edition, in a boxed highlight citing Brown’s work and titled “Do
Marketers Give too Much Allegiance to the Marketing Concept?” Kotler wrote,
“Professor Stephen Brown of Ulster University has challenged a number of
fundamental assumptions underlying the marketing concept. He thinks that marketers
make too much of researching and satisfying consumers, and as a result, risk losing
marketing imagination and significant consumer impact” (p. 681). The material goes
on to outline Brown’s main concerns. In the 12th edition, the boxed material was
expanded and titled “Fuelling Strategic Innovation” (p. 710).
As already mentioned, Kotler incorporated the notion of broadening the concept of
marketing, from his 1969 article, into the second edition of his textbook. Interestingly,
there are other instances where Kotler incorporates his own published academic papers
into his text. A Journal of Marketing article on “Behavioral models for analyzing
buyers” by Kotler (1965) appeared almost verbatim in his 1967 edition of Marketing
Management (pp. 82-94). In addition, in the 1976 edition, he incorporated his paper on
“The major tasks of marketing management” (Kotler, 1973). Through the simultaneous
publication of academic articles and textbooks, Kotler was able to leverage his work
and thereby disseminate his ideas widely.
Publisher concerns about length and classroom usability resulted in a heavily
revised third edition, published in 1976. Marketing Management was pared down to
496 pages. A 30-page integrative case was included in the text for the first time. This
reduction in length and content was the one misstep Kotler took in the history of the
book. He would later reincorporate much of the material left on the cutting room floor
in the fourth edition. The structure of Marketing Management remained fairly
consistent from this point forward.
Going through the subsequent editions of Marketing Management is enlightening,
not only to see how the books evolved over time, but also to understand how the author
himself transformed. The first edition was clearly the work of an economist who had a
behavioural science bent. With subsequent editions, one can see the marketer emerge
and become dominant.

Reactions to Kotler’s work

As we have already suggested, Kotler’s work has, in large part, been well-received by
the “marketing market.” His success is apparent in the awards he has received for his
academic publications, the popularity and wide-spread use of his textbooks, and the
almost universal praise he has received from his colleagues, practitioners, and
co-authors from around the world.
Not all reactions to Kotler’s work have been positive, however. The notion that
marketing should be broadened in its application beyond just business (Kotler and
Levy, 1969) was met with resistance (Luck, 1969). Despite this resistance, however, the
tremendous impact of “broadening marketing” is evidenced by journals dedicated to
EBR non-profit marketing (e.g. International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector
19,2 Marketing). It is also evidenced by numerous articles and books on marketing
non-profit organizations, ideas, causes, people, places, and nations, and by the
emphasis being put on implementing marketing concepts within organizations as
varied as museums, government agencies, and charities.
An unrecognized and unintended consequence of the broadening of marketing may
186 be increased commodification of complex social and human phenomena. People are not
products. Ethicists remind us that people have inherent rights, that they are not means
to an end, and that they are active participants in the exchange process. While Kotler
himself is acutely aware of these principles, his disciples may use simpler heuristics
and equate the marketing of people, ideas, political agendas, or noble causes as just
another case of “marketing soap.”
Kotler’s communication style has been accused of over-simplifying marketing
phenomena. Stephen Brown (2002b, p. 130) recognized this criticism when he
suggested that one reason why marketing researchers have neglected to analyze the
work of Philip Kotler is because “Kotler’s corpus is transparent, self-explanatory,
introductory level stuff and, therefore, hardly worth thinking about, let alone analyzing
in detail”. Brown makes this statement in an ironic fashion, however. In the next
paragraph, he goes on to say:
Such an attitude [the attitude that Kotler’s work is too simple and not worth studying], to be
sure, is somewhat condescending and one assumes that isn’t widely held. Kotler is one of the
foremost – arguably the foremost – figures in our field and, for this reason alone, his body of
work is well worth investigating. Indeed, if there is one thing that literary appreciation
teaches us, it is that even the most “innocent” texts, be they fairy tales, nursery rhymes or
comic strips, are the repository of deep meanings . . . (Brown, 2002b, p. 130).
Another criticism of Kotler’s work is that it has created a homogeneous, almost
unquestioning way of thinking about marketing (Brown, 2002a). One of the
respondents to the ELMAR survey recognized this liability for the marketing
discipline: “I have always enjoyed his work, especially his book on marketing
management . . . we cannot shake away his approach . . . We have been teaching
marketing ‘his way’ (sort of) for the past 35 years. I feel it’s about time for a change.” So
if the content provided by Kotler is unquestioned, how do some view the author
himself? “We all also revered your contribution to our intellectual curiosity . . . so much
so that we frequently referred to you as, yes, God [italics added]” (Schewe, 2006, p. 13).
People don’t question dogma or the deity from which it is purported to have come.
Kotler raised this concern himself 20 years ago: “One of the strongest signs of
marketing’s not yet coming of age is the relative absence of schools of thought within
the discipline. Virtually all marketers think the same way with respect to marketing
method, purpose, and values . . . progress is made through a clash in perspectives”
(Kotler, 1979, pp. 2-3). It is difficult to accept this line of thinking as a direct criticism of
Kotler’s work, however. The fact that his work has become so widely popular speaks
only to his success. The responsibility for imparting new ways of thinking about
marketing lies with other academics in our field.

Discussion
The preceding section uncovered emergent themes from the literature review and from
the interviews surrounding Kotler’s key contributions to the field of marketing, and
explored his Marketing Management textbook as one example of his many Philip Kotler
contributions. These themes included the personal forces that have shaped Kotler
and the macroenvironmental context within which he has made his contributions. An
important insight gained from our analysis is that the nature of Kotler’s contribution to
the field of marketing has been to help legitimize marketing knowledge as a rigorous
field of scientific academic inquiry, and a managerial domain of strategic importance
for organizations. 187
Many of the informants drew a clear link between Kotler, Kotler’s work, and the
legitimacy of the marketing discipline. The informants described him as a
“legitimizer,” the “ultimate authority,” “institutional,” “credible,” an “ambassador of
marketing,” and one who has “helped to create the dominant paradigm in which we are
operating today.” One informant even drew linkages between Kotler’s definitions of
marketing and definitions adopted by the American Marketing Association.
In a discipline often characterized by positivism and scientific realism (Anderson,
1983) and driven by empirical investigation, it is somewhat ironic that Kotler is seen as
an undisputed thought leader who brought legitimacy to an emerging and
unstructured field. He is an academic known for his conceptual contributions more
than for his empirical research. He is a person who creates knowledge through a
process of observation and synthesis versus experimental design. It is fascinating that
such a person could achieve the status of “legitimizer.” Undoubtedly, Kotler engaged in
the promotion of marketing as a science so that it might be perceived as more
legitimate. Perhaps Kotler’s career is evidence that legitimacy in marketing is more
than empirical science alone.
Looking back at the themes in the previous section, there are common threads
which point to how Kotler’s work may have attained its status and broad-based
acceptance. First, we see that Kotler is a keen observer, a “sponge,” someone who is in
touch with current trends and practice. Common sense dictates that if a book makes
unrealistic propositions, it is difficult to accept as legitimate knowledge. This fact may
well have been instrumental in establishing the legitimacy of his work, especially his
textbooks.
Second, Kotler has superior communication skills. He is able to communicate
complex phenomena in ways that are easy to visualize and understand. The
informants describe his writing style as crisp and concise, as well as interesting. The
fact that Kotler’s work is comprehensible and engaging may have been important in
establishing legitimacy. Intuition tells us that it is difficult to accept as legitimate what
we cannot understand.
Third, Kotler’s career extends to many areas – practice, consulting, teaching,
research – and he acknowledges that there are strong links between each of these
areas. The literature review revealed that his academic publications have appeared in
his textbooks. One informant felt that because Kotler was publishing in the Journal of
Marketing in the 1960s, this brought legitimacy to his notion of broadening the concept
of marketing. It seems that Kotler was able to leverage legitimacy in the different
aspects of his career, which in turn may have increased his ability to lend scientific and
managerial legitimacy to the field itself.
Fourth and finally, the knowledge produced by Kotler may not have been tested
empirically, but it has certainly been tested in use. For over 30 years, marketing
managers have trained using Kotler’s frameworks and have put his theories to the test
EBR of practice. Managers, consultants, and executive teachers alike cite Kotler’s work as
19,2 underpinning their thinking, practice, and success. In 1990, the profound impact of
adhering to marketing management, as articulated by Kotler, was in fact empirically
understood. These tests occurred as a result of the groundbreaking work that explored
the effect of a market orientation on the performance of the firm (see Jaworski and
Kohli, 1993; Kohli and Jaworski, 1990; Narver and Slater, 1990). Such empirical
188 extensions of Kotler’s philosophy have served to further legitimize his work.

Conclusion
This paper has taken preliminary steps towards exploring how Kotler has achieved his
influence in the field of marketing and to examine the nature of that influence. The
discovery-based process incorporated interviews, literature reviews, and participant
observation, which led to emergent themes. This paper began with a discussion of the
key factors that have shaped Kotler’s career – personal forces, notably his training and
personality, as well as macroenvironmental forces such as the rise of the managerial
school and a thrust towards marketing as a science. Second, this paper explored key
features of Kotler’s Marketing Management textbook, considering its place in the
context of time (i.e. the 1960s). Various observations pointed to four key characteristics
that set Kotler’s text apart from others: its managerial (non-descriptive) approach, its
focus on planning and strategy, its use of frameworks and decision making models,
and its ability to keep up with the times. Kotler’s background in economics and the
behavioural sciences, his clear communication style, his integrative abilities, and his
interest in the outside world enhanced his approach and were important factors in
making his textbook unique.
The final section discussed how these findings can shed insight into how Kotler has
contributed to the scientific and managerial legitimacy of the marketing discipline. It
has been suggested that perhaps legitimate marketing knowledge can be created
through a process that is: in tune with the world and committed to close observation;
clearly communicated and easily understood; leveraged through legitimacy in different
but related areas; and put to the test in the marketplace.

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Appendix
Interviews with colleagues
(1) What do you think is Philip Kotler’s single most important contribution to the field of
marketing? Describe that contribution and explain why it is important. How did this
contribution compare to (or differ from) other research or work in marketing that was
happening at the same time? Is this contribution still important today? If so, in what way?
(2) Besides the single most important contribution identified above, please discuss other
contributions that you feel are meaningful.
(3) What do you think have been some of the key influences on Kotler’s career? These might
be other researchers, characteristics of the marketing field and practice, or other external
influences.
(4) What effect has Kotler had on your definition of the discipline, your research, your
teaching, your consulting?
(5) Any other comments?

Interview with Philip Kotler

(1) If you had to pick one, what do you feel is your most important contribution to the field of
marketing? Why?
(2) What is your favourite academic article that you have published? What impact do you
think it had? Why do you think it had this impact? What inspired you to write this article?
(3) What have been some of the key factors that have influenced your contributions;
specifically:
.
What influenced you to come up with and later share your ideas on broadening the
concept of marketing/the generic concept of marketing (i.e. how did you ever arrive at
these ideas)?
.
What influenced you to write your Marketing Management textbook in the 1960s?
.
What influenced the structure, format, and content of your Marketing Management
textbook? What textbooks influenced your thinking?
. What academics/authors had the greatest impact on your early thinking about
marketing?
EBR (4) How was your Marketing Management textbook similar to and different from other
textbooks at the time (i.e. the 1960s)?
19,2 (5) In interviewing many of your colleagues, one of your great strengths has become evident
– your ability to develop frameworks in a way that make complex concepts easy for
other people to understand. Do you agree with this assessment of your work? When and
how did you learn this? What process do you go through to arrive at a framework?
192 (6) I understand that many of the other marketing textbooks in the 1960s and earlier took a
macro approach to marketing. Why did you feel that it was so important to take a micro
approach in your textbook? Did you face any resistance in doing this, or was it easily
accepted as legitimate?
(7) What is it about your textbook, Marketing Management, that has made it popular for so
long?
(8) How has your definition of the field and scope of marketing changed over time? What
direction do you see marketing taking in the future?
(9) What are other contributions (to the academic community, to marketing theory or
knowledge) that you are particularly proud of?

About the authors

Maureen A. Bourassa is a PhD Candidate in Marketing at Queen’s School of Business in
Kingston, Canada. Her research interests include exploring the meaning and impact of respect in
business-to-business relationships. She is currently conducting other research in the areas of
cause-related marketing and corporate social responsibility. Her past research has been
presented at the American Marketing Association Educators’ conference, the Academy of
Marketing Science conference, and at the Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in
Marketing (CHARM). She is the corresponding author and can be contacted at:
[email protected]
Peggy H. Cunningham is the Marie Shantz Teaching Associate Professor of Marketing at
Queen’s School of Business in Kingston, Canada. In addition to marketing history, her research
focuses on social alliances and the roles of ethics, trust, and integrity in developing and
maintaining marketing relationships. Her teaching interests include marketing strategy, brand
management, and marketing ethics. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of the Academy of
Marketing Science, the California Management Review, and the Journal of International
Marketing.
Jay M. Handelman is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Queen’s School of Business in
Kingston, Canada. His research examines how product and corporate brands come to be
managed in a turbulent social environment. His teaching interests include brand management,
marketing ethics, marketing theory and history, and interpretive research methods. His articles
have appeared in the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Consumer Research, and the Journal of
Retailing.

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