The American Marketing Association has updated its marketing definition and included
value for customers and customer relationships in the new definition. Moreover,
marketing is defined as one organizational function. Taking mainly service and
relationship marketing research as a starting point, this present article broadens
the discussion to a generic marketing level, and analyses the underpinning logic of
the updated definition. It concludes that the use of these elements of the
definition is not well founded in current research. Also, it shows that marketing
cannot be treated as one organizational function only. Drawing on the analysis of
the updated definition, a set of propositions regarding the scope and content of a
marketing definition are developed. Finally, based on the analysis and this set of
propositions, an alternative marketing definition, based on the promise concept, and
labelled a promises management definition, is suggested and its implications for
marketing research and practice are discussed.
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