Summary

As a profession, marketing is evolving, no longer based almost exclusively on conceptual content. That conceptual content will always have an important role to play in marketing, but the 21st century requires more analysis and rigor in marketing decision making.

Much of marketing resembles design engineering - putting together concepts, data, analyses, and simulations to learn about the marketplace and to design effective marketing plans. While many view traditional marketing as art and some view it as science, the new marketing increasingly looks like engineering (that is, combining art and science to solve specific problems).

Several key forces are changing the marketer's job:

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