The Harvard Business Review publishes an article titled Who Are the Gurus' Gurus? in which 200 names of people of different nationalities, dates of birth and specialty areas appear, whose common denominator is to be considered the gurus of Management.
Five of the two hundred names (Peter Drucker, Russell Ackoff, Gary Hamel and Michael Porter) are directly or indirectly associated with Marketing, while many of those who today are considered famous DO NOT appear, so I wondered who the gurus of this discipline.
My list has a personal bias and is not an objective, professional or formal compilation. It is deliberately short, so it unfairly omits some names; It looks dated, but the concepts and values introduced then haven't changed today, just the techniques.
It is my essential list and includes those people whose contribution to the business world, from a market perspective, I consider enormously significant.
The forerunners of the market approach
These first three authors published articles that redefined the course of Marketing in particular, of Business Administration in general and possibly of liberal capitalism.
(1) Peter Drucker, publicly recognized as the 'coolest mind' of our day, declared many years ago that the company's raison d'être is its customers. At least you have to read the interview that Shaker A. Zahra does for the Academy of Management Executive magazine) in its August 2003 issue.
(2) Russell L. Ackoff has exerted his influence in fields as diverse as operations research and psychology and has published as prolifically as Drucker. His Small Dose Administration Capsules (Limusa 1989) are a brief example of this and this article is decisive in understanding purchasing behavior: Advertising Research at Anheuser Bus, Inc. 1968 - 1974 (appears in the Spring Sloan Marketing Review 1975).
(3) Paul D. Converse, for his article The Development of the Science of Marketing - An Exploratory Survey (Journal of Marketing, July 1945) must be considered the true father of Marketing.
Marketing classics
The remaining 17 are professors who published articles that redefined the course of the academy and the practice of Marketing. It is mandatory to read the article indicated for each one.
(4) Theodore Levitt
Marketing Myopia
Harvard Business Review, 38 (July - August 1960)
(5) Neil H. Borden
The Concept of the Marketing Mix
Journal of Advertising Research, 5 (June 1964)
(Note that I prefer this original version of the 4 P's over the better-known one by Jerome McCarthy).
(6) Daniel Yankelovich
New Criteria for Market Segmentation
Harvard Business Review, 42 (March - April 1964)
(7) Martin Fishbein
Attitudes and Prediction of Behavior
Readings in Attitude Theory and Measurement (John Wiley 1967)
(8) Russell I. Haley
Benefit Segmentation: a Decision-oriented Research Tool.
Journal of Marketing volume 32 (July 1968)
(9) David Aaker
Using buyer behavior Models to improve Marketing Decisions
Journal of Marketing, 34 (July 1970)
(10) Philip Kotler
A Generic Concept of Marketing
Journal of Marketing, 36 (April 1972)
(11) Jagdish Sheth
A model of industrial buyer behavior
Journal of Marketing, 37 (October 1973)
(12) Leonard M. Lodish
Sales territory Alignment to Maximize Profit
Journal of Marketing Research, February 1975
(13) George S. Day
Diagnosing the Product Portfolio
Journal of Marketing, 41 (April 1977)
(14) Jacob Jacoby
Consumer Research: A state of the Art Review
Journal of Marketing, 42 (April 1978)
(15) Derek F. Abell
Strategic Windows
Journal of Marketing, 42 (July 1978)
(16) Gary Hamel
The core competence of the corporation
Harvard Business Review 68 (May - June 1990)
(17) Michael Porter
What is Strategy?
Harvard Business Review, November - December 1996
(18) Yoram (Jerry) Wind, then editor of the Journal of Marketing, published two articles that review and redefine the history of that publication, the first in January 1979 entitled The Journal of Marketing at a Crossroad and the second in April., Repositioning the Journal of Marketing.
(19) Paul Green, Professor Emeritus and
(20) David J. Reibstein, the best Marketing teacher today, agree at The Wharton School with many of the names listed here.
See the full list of that school's faculty here: and keep up to date with their newsletters, English version http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/ or Spanish version http://www.knowledgeatwharton.com.es/.
For those interested in the beginnings of Marketing, it is best to read the article by ET Grether published in the Journal of Marketing July 1976, The first 40 years. For those who prefer to read the latest, Myron Leonard offers an excellent Marketing Literature Review in the October 2000 issue.
As for books, I am suspicious of fads and commercial successes. It is not worth reading ephemeral news or nonsense, so I recommend a few, classic or about to be.
Two exceptions are worth noting. DO NOT read Sergio Zyman's The End of Marketing as We Know It or anything like it and DO read the most severe criticism represented by No Logo, by Naomi Klein (London, Harper Collins Publishers, 2000).
Marketing in general
The best book today is Roger Best's, Market Based Management (Prentice Hall, 2nd Edition 2000) because it accurately and accurately solves how to carry out Marketing tasks.
Philip Kotler offers in his Marketing Management (Prentice Hall, The Millennium Edition 2000) the best combination of concepts and examples of Marketing management for a manager in that area. While David W. Cravens in his Strategic Marketing (McGraw-Hill Irwin, 7th Edition 2003) offers an excellent vision for Senior Management to understand and adopt the market approach.
The following are bedside books, classified by specialty.
Derek Abell
Defining the Business: the Starting Point of Strategic Planning
Prentice Hall 1980
James H. Myers
Segmentation and Positioning for strategic Marketing decisions
American Marketing Association 1996
Donald S. Tull
Marketing Research. Meaning, Measurement and Method
Macmillan 1976
David A. Aaker
Building strong brands / The success of your product is in the brand
Ed. The Free Press / Ed. Prentice Hall
1996/1996
Christopher H. Lovelock
Services Marketing
Prentice Hall, 1996
Thomas T. Nagle
The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing
Prentice Hall, 1995
Louis Stern
Marketing Channel
Prentice Hall, 1996
Churchill, Ford, Johnson, Walker & Tanner
Sales Force Management
Irwin / McGraw Hill 2000
Donald Schultz
Integrated marketing communications
NTC, 1992
Roland T. Rust, Anthony J. Zahorik & Timothy Keiningham
Return on Quality
Irwin, 199438-547-5
Alejandro Snarch
New product: strategies for its creation, development and launch
Ed. Mc Graw Hill, 1992
ISBN: 958-600-068-0
This is my list. It can be rearranged, completed, trimmed, criticized, or destroyed. But what you should do is start reflecting and building your own list. It is an excellent exercise to know how much we know about Marketing.
