Marketing Art or Science

Marketing: Art or Science?

"I know half my advertising is wasted. I just don't know which half." (John Wanamaker). The father of modern advertising delivers an accurate assessment of early marketing. It was an art largely resistant to measurement. Marketers knew in general if something worked, but they weren't always sure why. A separation between art and science has long prevailed, with the gap becoming wider in recent history. Prompted by volatile new consumer trends, convoluted media landscapes, and increasing pressure for accountability of every marketing dollar spent, marketers today can no longer rely on aging methodologies to reach 21st century consumers. The need to incorporate science and intelligent analysis has significantly introduced modern analytics into all areas of life, from everyday sociological phenomena with "Freakonomics," to the world of marketing with the rise of captured consumer information.

Marketing needs to be scientific and measureable: Dependence on marketing undertakings that rely heavily on art (driven by appeal and imaginative design) can have catastrophic results. Without discipline around performance and measurement, there's no way to learn what's working and what isn't and provides no capacity to test and learn. Marketing is a science because marketing is about measuring and analyzing the numbers. Marketing as an art form may create a demand for a product but it is based on uncertainty and ambiguity. So, science must be the building block of any marketing; for example using models of consumer spending behavior or demographic profiling of target customers. Based on the foundation, art can then take over in developing the message in the most impactful way.

Influencing Human Psychology: It is clear that understanding consumer psychology is critical in positioning products. "Freakonomics" predicts human behavior (i.e psychology) and working of the real world by data mining and analysis of various databases. Marketing is nothing but the science of systematically studying and manipulating behaviors, which studies "how people react to certain incentives in predictable ways". Science also appears in many other forms in marketing, from psychology based theories such as the Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) to quantitive analysis techniques such as pattern matching (Saunders et al, 2009) which are measurable and use unbiased methods of data collection (Brown, 2001).

Understanding other Market Variables: "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). To satisfy the customer one must develop scientific methods to learn about customers, the market and how consumers generally behave in certain manners and deal with known variables.