Page 13 - Marketing the Basics 2nd

1
What is ManageMent?
Before delving into the world of marketing management, let us pause and briefly discuss what management is exactly, its history and how it has evolved through time.
Management is not only a word used to describe a group of executives. Management is also a philosophy. Management is the means to achieve an end. The late Peter Drucker, the doyen of management gurus, once said that, ‘The purpose of a business is to create a customer’. If you do that well, profits will follow.
For public institutions, they aim to increase social welfare for the public they serve by redistributing tax revenue; for non- governmental organizations, their goal is to improve the welfare of the disadvantaged or promote the observance of human rights or improve the state of the natural environment.
Though the goals of these three types of organization are different, which in turn means the decisions senior executives make will differ, all three operate with limited resources. As such, the approaches taken to realize their goals are remarkably similar. Management is the coordination of activities to maximize limited resources enabling an organization to realize a stated goal or objective.
The idea of management dates back to the beginning of civiliza- tion. The root of the word management can be traced back to Roman