Marketing genocide?

Not so long ago I have seen a film (Detachment, 2011 with Adrien Brody to be exact), where the main character posed such an affirmative. We all are living in marketing genocide, he said. Of course, it was an inevitably figure of speech. However, the doubt of whether marketers contribute to the well-being is posed. I'm sure that everybody from marketing sooner or later faces such an attitude towards him or her. So the question is whether marketing is worth to be a dignified career path, or it rests on a hopeless trickery, aimed at selling of useless things. Please, do not underestimate such feelings: they are much more popular, than is usually admitted.
First of all, why marketing might be of importance for any people around?
There must be a reason of being beyond anybody's will. The answer is very simple. In free economy, marketing serves as a system of planning of supplying goods and services. Marketing therefor plays a role much similar to what centralised planning system had once performed under the communist rule over Eastern Europe. Quite different mechanism plays for the same purpose. So marketing should support changes and transactions throughout entire economy. We all benefit from the transactions as they supply us with goods, jobs, and eventually - money. Development of marketing should lead to a further development of economy because of arising quantity and quality of transactions. To a big surprise at the early stage of marketing at the beginning of 20th century there had been clearly stated that marketing should pursue two types of goals. One stands for prosperity of an enterprise, while the other - for the well-being by supplying goods and providing the best practice of service a variety of needs a particular member of society might have.
Next time when dealing with customer let us think whether we provide a foremost contribution to the well-being of the community.  Because of marketing we have job, even far from its scope as do the most since everybody take part in changes. Because of it we could enjoy leisure, stuff our house with things we want and so on...

How marketing contributes to the wealth of a firm

Marketing contribution to the wealth of a firm is somewhat we have heard much about, but is rare to observe and distinguish. Contrary, marketing is widely criticised because of its apparent weak efficiency in creating the wealth of a firm. The question of efficiency has been long discussed by both marketers and academia. Now it is so far away from a consensus, as previously.
In my opinion, many problems of this kind are caused partly because of putting aside some fundamental principles. In order to get some more clarification to the way marketing should be performed, let us turn back to the roots of economics. 
What is economics? Essentially it stands for a way of creating, distributing and using of the wealth. As individuals and firms are different in their incomes and wealth, economics and marketing as its part is required to explain, which is the source of the difference and how, and why prosperous ones differ from unsuccessful. 
After Edith Penrose, we used to believe that those firms, which possess resources, meeting four basic requirements – value, rarity, impossibility to be imitated or being substituted are best prepared for competition in the marketplace. 
However, the firm’s resources might not be sufficient to sustain competitive advantage, as only few resources are productive. Firms need to have distinct capabilities to integrate different resources and make them perform some advantageous task or activity. Resources are the source of capabilities of an organisation, and capabilities are the main source of achieving competitive advantage. A firm’s capabilities may be viewed as glue that binds together all the resources and enables them to be deployed advantageously. So marketing should perform a function of developing firm's capability to be competitive. Furthermore, marketing is seemed to be in a connection with an ability of a firm to behave appropriately in the marketplace. Thus, often underestimated internal marketing might be the crucial driver of business development and competitiveness. 

My meaning of Marketing

Students and novice marketers often give a definition of marketing as of a science and art of customer satisfaction. Give customers what they want and make money! We are eventually said much about firms that get success because of being able to satisfy capricious consumers wishes. However, one should not forget pricing: the price definitely should be with nines, and 999.99 is just an ideal. Do not forget about advertising as a dirty, ugly puffing trickery, persuading customers to buy a TV set only because of a presence of hidden or explicit sexual allusions. And there must be something about distribution. Nevertheless, distribution is difficult - there are formulas and calculations, while become a marketer often means no maths at University!

That's all what one can find almost everywhere in marketing textbooks around the world. Of course, one may wonder why owners and tops have long been interested in the question of what performance is associated with marketing and why the performance sometimes seems much lower than expected. Why so few CEOs are from marketing divisions? When companies get success - it was because of marketing or just of growing with the market?

In response, you can certainly make some sophisticated calculation for new indicators that are intended to give quantitative and measurable objective evaluation criteria, and subsequently make a judgement where the result is positive, and where - is negative.

However, the ultimate goal is to understand, not to evaluate per se. Balanced Scorecards of marketing, which has become so popular recently stand for a good example. Based on the scorecards where from, at the same time, could we know that our marketing is aimed at things the organisation needs? Or that it is correctly designed as a whole, with proper goals and objectives, so finely tracked by Balanced Scorecard? Remember, "marketing - it's about customer satisfaction." What if the customer is very expensive to be serviced? What if satisfying certain needs are immoral, not to mention it might be illegal? Should we try anyway? Nonsense! Marketing suffers much from the misunderstanding by most marketers, whence follows an incorrect and inappropriate use of its recipes, which in turn leads to low efficiency.

My understanding of the role of marketing in the organization is simple: marketing is aimed at achieving the organization's goals in regard to its interaction in the market. Depending on how important this market activity is we can identify its significance, the circle of responsibility, and resources that are available and needed to carry out its tasks.

This blog is dedicated to the role and importance of marketing for the success of business and competitiveness of enterprises. It is intended to be about marketing and its importance to the organization and the economy as a whole, as well as for society. Without myths, inflated promises and empty criticism. I stand for a meaningful marketing with a common sense, for reason and realism in marketing!