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1 Introduction
Marketing comes with a wide variety of definitions, all of them converging on the view that marketing is a customer-oriented strategic management process, which combines both a theoretical framework as well as a practical set of methods and techniques, for its realisation. Kotler (1972, p. 12) defines marketing as "the effective management by an organization of its exchange relationship with its various markets and publics". Furthermore:
[...] marketing is the science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit. Marketing identifies unfulfilled needs and desires. It defines, measures and quantifies the size of the identified market and the profit potential. It pinpoints which segments the company is capable of serving best and it designs and promotes the appropriate products and services (Kotler Marketing Group, 2012, p. 1).
According to Yorke (1984, p. 17) marketing is more a "corporate philosophy" and a "market oriented organization is constantly attempting to match its resources, both current and accessible, to the needs of the market in order to achieve its corporate objectives".
The most important concepts of marketing are:
[...] segmentation, targeting, positioning, needs, wants, demand, offerings, brands, value and satisfaction, exchange, transactions, relationships and networks, marketing channels, supply chain, competition, the marketing environment, and marketing programs. These terms make up the working vocabulary of the marketing professional (Kotler Marketing Group, 2012, p. 1).
Quite clearly, marketing assists an organisation in the process of quality products and services development, by taking first into account customers needs, aiming to increase product and services ' awareness as well as their usage (Bushing, 1995; Arachchige, 2002a; Blackstead and Shoaf, 2002). Additionally, marketing can provide a range of useful tools aiming to determine and evaluate the appropriateness of the existing services and products of an organisation (Besant and Sharp, 2000; Martey, 2000; Schmidt, 2006; Andreasen and Kotler, 2007).
Kotler ' s (1982, p. 27) definition of marketing for non-profit organisations suggests that "is the skill of knowing how to plan and manage the organization ' s exchange relations with its various publics". In their classic pioneering article, Kotler and Levy (1969) introduced the idea of expanding marketing thought, and theory in order "to incorporate marketing activities in public and...