The Father of Marketing, professor Philip Kotler was invited to give a keynote speech at the 2013 World Marketing Summit. He reviewed the development of marketing thinking in recent decades and compared the characteristics of different stages of market and economic development.

In particular, he pointed out that marketing learning is a discipline that needs to keep pace with the times and iterate continuously due to changes in the environment.

Kotler describes the social environment since the 1950s. The 1950s to the early 1960s was the so-called post-war recovery era. At that time, except for the United States, the situation in other countries can be summed up in one word-“poor”!

The industrial production of various countries barely maintains the basic life of the people. The United States almost survived the Second World War, the industrial base was not damaged, and it took the lead in completing the recovery plan, and several giants in the manufacturing and retail industries emerged.

“Sell things to meet the basic daily consumption of ordinary people” was the marketing thinking of the United States at that time. Other regions, whether it is Europe or Asia, are basically still in the post-war recovery stage, and there is not much need for “marketing”, because it is good to have products, and companies will not face sales problems at all, only the issue of whether the products are enough to distribute.

From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, the U.S. economy began to enter a period of rapid growth in the industrial age. Although there are more standardized products on the market, ordinary people basically have no choice.

For example, the Ford “T-Car” at that time was invincible all over the world. If consumers wanted a car that could afford the price, there was only one “T-Car” to choose from, and there was only one color. kind.

From the 1970s to the mid-1980s, the market accelerated, and turbulent, and fierce competition began. From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, computers began to shrink from IBM mainframes to personal computers based on Intel central processing units and Microsoft software systems, and the computer era came. From the 1990s to the 2000s, due to the rapid development of computer technology and the leadership of the first generation of the Internet, the “one-to-one” era began.

In the next 10 years, we entered an era driven by personal values. In recent years, it can be called the era is driven by the Internet and big data. Marketing is a science that emphasizes practice. The purpose of marketing is to help companies create value for customers, so marketing thinking also needs to keep pace with the times.

The entire history of business development spanning fifty or sixty years stated by Kotler may seem a bit complicated, but in fact, it is the general environment that gave birth to the development and innovation of marketing theories, and marketing theories have also undergone changes with the changes in the general environment—iteration, from Marketing 1.0 to Marketing 4.0.