J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci.
(2009) 37:17–19
DOI 10.1007/s11747-008-0105-1
BRIEF REPORT
Peter Drucker—the grandfather of marketing: an interview
with Dr. Philip Kotler
Robert E. Gunther
Received: 17 June 2008 / Accepted: 18 June 2008 / Published online: 18 July 2008
# Academy of Marketing Science 2008
Abstract In this interview, Professor Philip Kotler, S.C.
Johnson & Son Professor of International Marketing at the
Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University,
reflects on Peter Drucker’s personal and professional impact
on Kotler’s work. He discusses his personal encounters with
Peter Drucker and their common interests, including non-
profit management and Japanese art.
Keyword Peter Drucker . Philip Kotler . 4 Ps
Phil Kotler met Peter Drucker through their common
interest in serving non-profits. Kotler had published
Strategic-Marketing for Non-Profit Organizations in 1971
and Drucker invited him to Claremont to discuss the topic.
“Before I met Peter Drucker, I was a long-time reader and
admirer of his insight-filled writings. Then one day, out of
the blue, I received a call from Peter inviting me to visit
him in Claremont, California, to spend a day together. In
my mind, this was more exciting than a call from any other
person that I could imagine.”
They discovered that in addition to an interest in
business and non-profits, they shared an interest in
Japanese art, so the first stop after lunch was a visit to
Drucker’s art collection on the Claremont campus. Kotler
visited his home and then went to a recording studio
nearby, which Drucker relied upon to reduce his travel.
Dr. Philip Kotler is an S.C. Johnson & Son distinguished professor of
international marketing at the Northwestern University Kellogg
School of Management in Evanston, Illinois.
R. E. Gunther (*)
Robert E. Gunther Communications,
215 Sheeder Road,
Phoenixville, PA 19460, USA
e-mail: robert@gunthercommunications.com
There, Drucker recorded an interview with Kotler on the
role of marketing in non-profit organizations, which was
later published in the 1990 book, Managing the Non-Profit
Organization. When the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for
Nonprofit Management (now the Leader to Leader Insti-
tute) was founded in 1990, Kotler was asked by Francis
Hesselbein, former leader of the Girl Scouts of America, to
serve on its board. In this capacity, he continued to interact
with Peter Drucker and treasured the handwritten notes
received from him. Kotler calls Drucker “the most
impressive person that I had ever met.”
I spoke with Phil Kotler by telephone in June 2007 about
his thoughts on Peter Drucker and, in particular, his
contributions to the field of marketing.
How would you characterize Peter Drucker’s role in
marketing? Peter Drucker is the father of management.
For many of us, he is our role model, continually generating
new ideas and refining old ones. I regard it as a compliment
when some people call me “the father of marketing.” I tell
them that if this is the case, then Peter Drucker is “the
grandfather of marketing.”
Could you elaborate on the statement that Peter Drucker is
the grandfather of marketing? Peter was an early visionary
regarding the discipline of marketing. This is because of the
inspiration of his well quoted statements such as “the aim
of marketing is to make selling unnecessary” and “The
purpose of a company is to create a customer...The only
profit center is the customer...Therefore the business has
two—and only two—basic functions: marketing and
innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results: all
the rest are costs.” If we made a collection, I bet there
would be 10 or 20 statements he made that sank into all of
us. Everyone is indebted to him for awakening managers to
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the true role of marketing and customer-centered thinking
in shaping the firm’s mission, strategy and success.
You were developing frameworks for marketing at the same
time you were influenced by Peter Drucker. What impact
did he have on your work? I wouldn’t say my framework
came from Peter, but maybe some philosophical things
came from him. I was independently humanistic and
oriented toward the welfare of all, and I always took a
broad view of everything. Peter was dipping into history
and science, and I was always doing the same.
Peter Drucker saw selling as the antithesis of marketing.
How did his distinction between marketing and selling
influence your thinking, for example, in your 2006 HBR
article, “Ending the War Between Marketing and Sell-
ing”? I never connected the two before you did, but maybe
it was a seed that was lying dormant. I love the idea that
great marketing is when you spot an unrecognized need,
launch an appropriate product or solution and it sells itself.
A corollary is that if a lot of hard selling is going on, the
product is a failure in itself.
I wrote on this subject because I wanted to confront the
mistaken idea that marketing is only a one-P function—
promotion, namely advertising and selling—not the 4 Ps or
a driving force in the whole organization. To me, marketing
is the driving force of a customer-oriented company and a
customer-oriented company will do better than a product-
oriented company.
It was much later that I realized I had to examine the
difference between marketing and sales. Peter had posi-
tioned them as opposites. Actually, Peter implied that the
real work of marketing is marketing research and great
product development, and much less selling and advertis-
ing. A great product will sell itself.
It is important to note that the sales force function plays
a larger role in business-to-business (B2B) marketing than
business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing. Business goods are
typically sold one to one, whereas consumer goods are sold
one to many. Those selling consumer goods draw much
more on advertising to build a brand because there is less
one-to-one contact.
I have long felt that marketing must be understood better
and integrated better in various inter-functional activities of
the firm. Drucker wrote a lot about innovation. I am
currently looking at the battles that take place between
marketing and development when a company is developing
a new product. Development may want to take more time to
make the product perfect, and usually this will mean pricing
it higher. Marketing may want to establish a low price point
and simpler features and get the product finished and
launched as early as possible.
J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2009) 37:17–19
That customer-centric view is something Drucker also
advocated in his statement that the purpose of the company
is to create customers, right? The customer is what it is all
about. Customers are scarcer than products. I use the
mantra” CIB”—Customer Is Boss. The employee’s pay-
check comes from customers. No customers, no paycheck. I
articulated the characteristics of a customer-driven firm in
all of my editions of Marketing Management. Other
marketers developed scales of market orientation and
measured its strong impact on company profitability
Recently Raj Sisodia, David Wolfe, and Jagdish Sheth
(2007) published a book called Firms of Endearment. They
asked people “Which companies do you love or would miss
if they went under?” Over 20 companies were mentioned,
including Amazon, Starbucks, Google, Harley Davidson,
and Southwest Airlines. Not only were these companies
profitable but they spent far less on marketing. Why?
Because the delighted customers were doing the marketing.
This is consistent with Drucker’s thinking that winning
companies are those that introduce highly appreciated
products and services.
Peter Drucker argued for a broader view of marketing as a
business philosophy, and considered profit maximization as
irrelevant. How can this view be balanced with the current
emphasis from the CFO and CEO (and CMO) on
measuring and demonstrating the bottom-line returns from
marketing? Peter would say that running the firm for profit
maximization would only produce short-term profits. The
company would fail to make long-run marketing investments
in order to show quarterly profits. Successful firms such as
Johnson & Johnson would say that their first goal is to satisfy
their customers, their second goal is to satisfy their employees,
their third goal is to satisfy their communities, and then they
pay attention to profits. The results are that their profits are
higher. This view that satisfying the stakeholders—not just the
stockholders—has led to the “balanced scorecard” view of
successful business performance. Drucker always wanted
companies to take a broader view of their impact on society.
Drucker influenced companies to manage by objectives
and results. Accountability is important. Financial metrics
and non-financial metrics are important.
How were you influenced personally by Peter Drucker (his
broad interests in arts, music and other areas)? Peter was a
Renaissance man. There is no question about it. He was
blessed with a wonderful memory. He could probably tell
you what happened in any year in any part of Europe. He
grew up in Vienna and met many prominent people who
dined with his family.
I don’t know how Peter acquired his knowledge. He would
write articles that would appear in the Wall Street Journal or
J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2009) 37:17–19
Harvard Business Review that contained many facts and
assertions. How did he have access to so much learned
information? This was before the Internet and Google.
What influence did Peter Drucker have on your studies of
non-profits? I had already written my book on non-profit
marketing before I met with Peter. In the studio, Peter
interviewed me about the role that marketing can play to
help nonprofit organizations improve their performance.
His questions were thought-provoking. I subsequently
decided to undertake research into the museum world and
the performing arts world to really answer his penetrating
questions. The research resulted in publishing Museum
Strategy and Marketing and Standing Room Only: Strate-
gies for Marketing the Performing Arts.
When the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit
Management was formed in the 1980’s with the help of the
very special Francis Hesselbein, former leader of the Girl
Scouts of America, I was invited to join the Advisory
Board. Many of Peter’s long-time acquaintances and
admirers were on this board. Peter didn’t even want the
Institute to be named after him. He relented on the
condition that the name Peter Drucker would eventually
be removed and replaced by another title, now the Leader
to Leader Institute.
The Drucker Foundation was set up to help nonprofit
organizations (NPOs) improve their performance by hear-
ing from other NPOs and scholars. I attended several
annual meetings where 300 or more NPOs would be
present. At the annual meeting, the Drucker Institute
presented awards to organizations that innovated exciting
new solutions to social problems.
Among all the people who influenced your work, how
would you characterize the role of Peter Drucker? When I
think about people who influenced my work, Drucker was
one of the main ones. My formal training in economics was
with two eminent Nobel prize winners, Milton Friedman at
the University of Chicago for my M.A. degree and Paul
Samuelson of M.I.T for my Ph.D. degree. I owe it to them
that I went into marketing because I felt that they failed to
talk about the real market economy. They talked about the
role of price but said nothing about the role of advertising,
sales force and distributors in influencing and satisfying
demand. I wanted to fill in the gap and create something
between macro economics and microeconomics, which I
call market economics..
I was selected along with 50 other professors in the Ford
Foundation’s 1960 Harvard program to study higher math-
ematics for one year and bring it into use in management
education and research. It was a wonderful year and I met
19
several marketing professors such as Frank Bass, Bill Lazer,
and Jerry McCarthy in the group. Jerry was writing the first
edition of his Marketing and developed the 4 Ps framework.
He had studied Northwestern University under Professor
Richard Clewett who talked about product, price, promo-
tion and distribution. Jerry called the last P “place.” It
stuck. Some people think that I invented the 4Ps but the
credit belongs to Dick Clewett. Earlier Neil Borden at
Harvard had formulated the marketing mix with 12
activities and it was a relief to collapse them into four Ps.
You mentioned that you shared an interest in Japanese art
with Peter Drucker. How is the Japanese aesthetic different
from the Western aesthetic? I learned a great deal from
Peter about the Japanese aesthetic which is quite different
from the Western aesthetic. The Japanese bring a different
set of concepts to understand and judge greatness in works
of art. They have terms such as sabi and wabi. Sabi is a
quality of quietness and refinement in a work of art to be
admired over bright and glaring things. Wabi is an
admiration of aged objects that have lived and been touched
by real experience. You see a ceramic bowl and the
fingerprint of the Japanese craftsman and you can almost
see how he pressed the bowl. Under wabi, a tree that was
worn and weathered was more admired than a tree that was
fresh and young.
In speaking about these Japanese terms, it sounds like you
could be describing Peter Drucker. In going to his home, I
was impressed with Peter’s modesty. It was a normal ranch
home, not generous in size. I was trying to figure out how
he and Doris Drucker entertained so many CEOs and
prominent people who visited their home to discuss their
problems. Peter was not materialistically oriented.
Peter and I were both deeply interested in the Japanese.
In my book The New Competition, I asserted that the
Japanese were the best marketers in the world because they
were interested in creating the world’s highest quality
products at a lower price. At the time, they were taking
over the auto industry, the electronics industry, and many
other industries. The Japanese adored Peter Drucker. His
writings and his style made so much sense to them and they
could comfortably fit his thinking into their business system
and ideas.
References
Sisodia, R. S., Wolfe, D. B., & Sheth, J. N. (2007). Firms of
endearment: How world-class companies profit from passion and
purpose. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School.