By Henry Kyambalesa
25 December 2025
The term “principles of marketing” is used in this article to refer to the “tenets” or basic “beliefs” relating to the field of marketing. To date, the field of marketing lacks a definitive set of beliefs or principles. To fill the void, it is tempting to present the following notions delineated from what is discerned in the preceding sections of this chapter and elsewhere in the book as “principles of marketing”:
Principle 1: Competitive Settings. Marketing, whether it takes the form of “domestic marketing” or “international marketing,” is a free-enterprise concept; it cannot be meaningfully applied in an economy where the market forces of supply and demand are inadvertently or otherwise suppressed by monopolistic government policies and/or other hurdles to the proper operation and functioning of business entities.
The bedrock of marketing, therefore, is an economic setting that is characterized by pricing and investment freedom—that is, the “free-enterprise” system.
Principle 2: Concerted Action. Marketing can make promises to meet the needs and expectations of customers, but, as Mlenga Jere has maintained, the synergic involvement of an entire organization is needed to fulfill the promises. In other words, marketing needs to permeate all units of an organization and influence them to contribute positively toward the attainment of marketing and, subsequently, corporate objectives.
Principle 3: Centrality of Customers. The long-term success of any give business entity is contingent upon its ability to direct all its marketing efforts and activities at adequately meeting the needs and expectations of its customers.
Principle 4: Rounded Problem-Solving. Sound customer relations require marketers to continuously gauge and analyze customers’ attitudes and complaints, and to take both corrective and proactive measures designed to mitigate customer discontent.
Principle 5: The R+R Factor. Sustained ‘Repeat sales’ and ‘customer Referrals’ are, together, a manifestation of successful marketing efforts, and are the linchpin of a business entity’s long-term success and survival.
Principle 6: Quality and Price. Customers worldwide, as Hajime Karatsu and W. J. Holstein have noted, have become overly choosy and hard-to-satisfy. Thus, business entities which expect buyers to sacrifice quality for low prices, or vice versa, should not expect to succeed or survive in modern business settings.
Principle 7: Internal Role. Marketing plays the role of linking a business entity and its customers. The importance of this role of marketing, according to Mlenga Jere, can be grasped easily by recognizing the fact that the only thing that a business generates internally are costs; the market is the only source of the money any business organization needs to be able to fortify its long-term success and survival.
Principle 8: External Role. Marketing contributes to the fostering of socioeconomic development. In the words of Peter Drucker, it can function as “a catalyst for the transmutation of latent resources into actual resources, of desires into accomplishment, and the development of responsible economic citizens.”
Principle 9: Social Productivity. Modern society expects marketers to seek socially beneficial results along with economically beneficial results in all their policies, decisions and activities—and they need to do so for the following reasons, among others: firstly, it is morally the right thing for them to do, and, secondly, modern society cannot condone business pursuits, programs and practices that are contrary to public interests and expectations. And
Principle 10: A Sphere of Change. In terms of both theory and practice, the field of marketing is continually in a state of flux dictated by changing social, economic, competitive, and technological conditions. This has created a need for marketing scholars and practitioners to constantly update their marketing knowledge and skills to remain at the cutting edge of their marketing-based careers.
Disclaimer: The content of this article is excerpted and adapted from the author’s book entitled A Fresh Look at Marketing (Saarbrucken, Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2019), pp. 30–32.