Top 82 Quotes & Sayings by Philip Kotler

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American author Philip Kotler.

Last updated on September 17, 2024.

Philip Kotler is an American marketing author, consultant, and professor emeritus; the S. C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University (1962–2018). He is known for popularizing the definition of marketing mix. He is the author of over 80 books, including Marketing Management, Principles of Marketing, Kotler on Marketing, Marketing Insights from A to Z, Marketing 4.0, Marketing Places, Marketing of Nations, Chaotics, Market Your Way to Growth, Winning Global Markets, Strategic Marketing for Health Care Organizations, Social Marketing, Social Media Marketing, My Adventures in Marketing, Up and Out of Poverty, and Winning at Innovation. Kotler describes strategic marketing as serving as "the link between society's needs and its pattern of industrial response."

American - Author | Born: May 27, 1931

Source: Wikipedia

Today you have to run faster to stay in place.

Philip Kotler

The future isn’t ahead of us. It has already happened.

Philip Kotler

Companies pay too much attention to the cost of doing something. They should worry more about the cost of not doing it.

Philip Kotler

Authentic marketing is not the art of selling what you make but knowing what to make!

Philip Kotler

Today's smart marketers don't sell products; they sell benefit packages. They don't sell purchase value only; they sell use value.

Philip Kotler

The art of marketing is the art of brand building. If you arenot a brand, you are a commodity. Then price is everything and the low-cost producer is the only winner.

Philip Kotler

Marketing is becoming a battle based on information than on sales power.

Philip Kotler

Over the past 60 years, marketing has moved from being product-centric (Marketing 1.0) to being consumer-centric (Marketing 2.0). Today we see marketing as transforming once again in response to the new dynamics in the environment. We see companies expanding their focus from products to consumers to humankind issues. Marketing 3.0 is the stage when companies shift from consumer-centricity to human-centricity and where profitability is balanced with corporate responsibility.

Philip Kotler

Don’t buy market share. Figure out how to earn it.

Philip Kotler

Marketing is the set of human activities directed at facilitating and consummating exchanges.

Philip Kotler

Competitive advantage is a companys ability to perform in one or more ways that competitors cannot or will not match.

Philip Kotler

Good companies will meet needs; great companies will create markets.

Philip Kotler

The theory of marketing is solid but the practice of marketing leaves much to be desired.

Philip Kotler

The most common conception of Capitalism is that it is an economic system consisting of privately owned businesses and large corporations that are run for profit. The profit comes from running the business efficiently and keeping the products and services up to date and competitively priced.

Philip Kotler

There are times when a market such as housing, transportation or the stock or mortgage market keep rising and people with capital want to join in this growth. Soon the markets become overheated, partly because of the abundance of investment money and speculation. This is when the government should raise interest rates and increase the cost of borrowed money. Governments are shy about doing this because it could cause the very recession. Yet this is the best time to do this so that the inevitable recession never reaches the magnitude of the recent Great Recession.

Philip Kotler

Great insight comes from seeing something as odd and finding out why.

Philip Kotler

My primary early interest was in marketing and my aim was to improve its theories, methods and tools. Early on I pressed companies to adopt a consumer orientation and to be in the value creation business. I didn't pay much attention to the social responsibilities of business until later. Now I am pressing companies to address the triple bottom line: people, the planet, and profits. I found that companies were too much into short term profit maximization and they needed to invest more in sustainability thinking.

Philip Kotler

Your company does not belong inmarkets where it cannot be the best.

Philip Kotler

Too much of the income gains go to too few people, even though all of the stakeholders worked together to make their companies successful. By failing to put enough income into more hands, the GDP grows slower and consumers manage to meet their needs by incurring high levels of debt.

Philip Kotler

The successful salesperson cares first for the customer, second for the products.

Philip Kotler

The internet will create the winnerand bury the laggards.

Philip Kotler

I have always favored Capitalism as the best economic system and Democracy as the best political system. They both have the most potential for improving the lives of people. However, both systems need to be reexamined and refreshed so that, in fact, they do serve the majority of people.

Philip Kotler

It is no longer enough to satisfy your customers. You must delight them.

Philip Kotler

Marketing takes a day to learn. Unfortunately, it takes a lifetime to master.

Philip Kotler

It is more important to do what is strategically right than what is immediately profitable.

Philip Kotler

The sales department isn’t the whole company, but the whole company better be the sales department.

Philip Kotler

The key to branding, especially for smaller firms, is to focus on a limited number of issue areas and develop superb expertise in those areas.

Philip Kotler

Marketing is a race without a finishing line

Philip Kotler

The most important thing is to forecast where customers are moving, and be in front of them.

Philip Kotler

In fact, Capitalism has a vested interest in creating new wants and making people unhappy until they acquire the next good.

Philip Kotler

Every business is a service business. Does your service put a smile on the customer's face?

Philip Kotler

The best way to hold customers is to constantly figure out how to give them more for less.

Philip Kotler

The CEO announces that the purpose of the firm is to improve the lives of the customers and the lives of the firm's stakeholders and the quality of the planet. The company will give fair compensation to all the stakeholders and the CEO will not earn more than 20 times the median income of his employees. He will want his employees to rate him, just as he also has to rate them.

Philip Kotler

Every company should work hard to obsolete its own product line - before its competitors do.

Philip Kotler

A great leader is one who surrounds himself with great people who then, collectively, innovate and implement with success. If he tries to do it all by himself, he is an egotist and likely to fail.

Philip Kotler

We need to take a close look at the relationship between the economic system of Capitalism and the political system of Democracy. A democracy with high concentrations of private wealth buys votes and interferes with the ability of Capitalism to perform well. It is no longer one citizen, one vote.

Philip Kotler

Good customers are an asset which, when wellmanaged and served, will return a handsome lifetime income stream for the company.

Philip Kotler

Whenever someone wonders how I could have written 57 books, I remind them that Isaac Asimov wrote 500 books. I like Asimov's view that great insight comes from seeing something as odd and finding out why. Curiosity is the starting point for great science.

Philip Kotler

When it comes to efficiency and effectiveness, I would always start with effectiveness. I am interested in achieving a certain outcome. Only secondarily do I worry about achieving it as efficiently as possible.

Philip Kotler

I believe in the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profits. I would make sure to hire the best people and pay them more than my competitors. I would encourage their participation in decision making and hope that they can feel free to disagree with me.

Philip Kotler

Requiring the payment of higher wages will lead to a loss of some jobs and a raising of prices which drives companies to search for automation to reduce costs. On the other hand, those receiving higher wages will spend more (the marginal propensity to consume is close to 1 for low income earners) and this will increase demand for additional goods and services. Henry Ford had the clearest vision of why companies can actually benefit by paying higher wages.

Philip Kotler

A country's middle class is its bedrock.

Philip Kotler

Whenever someone wonders how I could have written 57 books, I remind them that Isaac Asimov wrote 500 books.

Philip Kotler

Authentic marketing is not the art of selling what you make but knowing what to make. It is the art of identifying and understanding customer needs and creating solutions that deliver satisfaction to the customers, profits to the producers and benefits for the stakeholders.

Philip Kotler

The best advertising is done by satisfied customers.

Philip Kotler

There is only one winning strategy. It is to carefully define the target market and direct a superior offering to that target market.

Philip Kotler

I admire firms that have achieved a real differentiation from their competitors. Nike is all about mastering sports. Apple is all about creating technologies to make life easier and better. Audi is is all about introducing new technologies to make automobiles safer and better performing.

Philip Kotler

Integrated marketing communications is a way of looking at the whole marketing process from the view point of the customer.

Philip Kotler

A person without an Apple watch is perfectly content with his present watch but when he sees his friends buying the watch, he will hanker for an Apple watch. The endless cycle of wanting, getting, and wanting again is part of the plot of Capitalism. It is the way Capitalism creates jobs. The only antidote is Buddhism that holds that people might be happier by renouncing desire rather than by striving to satisfy desire. But then how can the economy create enough jobs in a Buddhist society of "less is more."

Philip Kotler

Strategy is indeed about choosing what not to do as well as what to do. A business unit needs to decide what need it aims to satisfy in what group of people and with what value proposition that distinguishes the business from its competitors.

Philip Kotler

Every company that manufactures something is causing some damage either to the soil or water or air. Most companies treat these as externalities. But the growing movement of sustainability calls for companies to internalize these costs. Once companies do this, they will have a strong incentive to reduce their carbon footprint.

Philip Kotler

People are more comfortable with the familiar. It takes selling a big dream that comes with excellent income possibility to get someone to leave his or her comfort zone.

Philip Kotler

Watch the product life cycle; but more important, watch the market life cycle.

Philip Kotler

There is no such thing as a commodity. It is simply a product waiting to be differentiated.

Philip Kotler

Many great ideas need refreshment and deeper analysis. "Freedom," for example, is a great idea but it has become a cliché.

Philip Kotler

Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value.

Philip Kotler

Poor firms ignore their competitors; average firms copy their competitors; winning firms lead their competitors.

Philip Kotler

The key solution is to invest in innovation and entrepreneurship within the company. Reducing waste - although probably not eliminating it - and do so at all levels of government would probably generate the capital needed. Alas, that will probably not happen because it makes too much sense.

Philip Kotler

Curiosity is the starting point for great science.

Philip Kotler

When managers overdo micromanaging of others, they probably hired the wrong people or failed to give them a clear idea of what each one is to accomplish. I prefer to train employees to be self-managers, just as in an orchestra each performer knows his or her role without being micromanaged.

Philip Kotler

Top 82 Quotes & Sayings by Philip Kotler

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