EPR Editorial Team4 min read
No single person invented marketing. Trade is ancient, but marketing as a named field of study began in 1902 and 1903, when the universities of Illinois, Michigan and California offered the first courses in distribution. Ralph Starr Butler taught an early Wisconsin marketing course around 1910. Philip Kotler, whose textbook Marketing Management first appeared in 1967, is the person most often credited with codifying the discipline.
Updated October 19, 2026.
Marketing began as a university subject in the 1902-1903 academic year. A Business History Conference paper on the historiography of marketing traces the earliest North American teaching to that year, when Illinois, Michigan and California offered the first distribution courses.
At the University of Michigan, Edward David Jones taught "The Distributive and Regulative Industries of the United States" in 1902. Historians following Robert Bartels report that Jones's course description was the first to use the word marketing.
Ralph Starr Butler then built a course at the University of Wisconsin around 1910 and turned it into the textbook Marketing Methods. The Advertising Hall of Fame credits that course with fixing how the word "marketing" is used today.
Philip Kotler contributed the textbook that standardized marketing education, plus two papers that widened what marketing covers. Marketing Management first appeared in 1967 and is now in its 16th edition, written by Kotler, Kevin Lane Keller and Alexander Chernev and published by Pearson in 2022. Kotler is Emeritus S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.
| Year | Work | What it added |
|---|---|---|
| 1967 | Marketing Management | A single textbook that organized analysis, planning and control of marketing |
| 1969 | "Broadening the Concept of Marketing," with Sidney Levy, Journal of Marketing | Applied marketing to nonprofits, agencies and other non-commercial groups |
| 1971 | "Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned Social Change," with Gerald Zaltman, Journal of Marketing | Applied marketing to public health, safety and other behavior-change campaigns |
Kotler did not coin the word or the four Ps. His contribution was to gather scattered business-school topics into one structure, which is why textbooks cite him as the field's codifier rather than its inventor.
E. Jerome McCarthy popularized the four Ps (product, price, place, promotion) in his 1960 textbook Basic Marketing. The phrase "marketing mix" is older: Harvard professor Neil Borden used it in his 1953 American Marketing Association presidential address.
The two ideas fit together. Borden supplied the concept of a mix of ingredients a manager blends, and McCarthy reduced the ingredients to four memorable categories. Kotler then built the four Ps into the framework of Marketing Management, which carried them into classrooms worldwide.
Five thinkers after Butler each named a part of the discipline that is still taught under their label.
| Thinker | Work and year | Idea |
|---|---|---|
| Theodore Levitt | "Marketing Myopia," Harvard Business Review, 1960 | Define the business by customer need, not by the product |
| Al Ries and Jack Trout | Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, 1981 | Own one clear position in the buyer's mind |
| David Aaker | Managing Brand Equity, 1991 | Treat brand as a measurable asset |
| Geoffrey Moore | Crossing the Chasm, 1991 | Technology products stall between early adopters and the mainstream |
| Edward Bernays | Crystallizing Public Opinion, 1923 | Public relations as a discipline separate from advertising |
Bernays belongs to the neighboring field of public relations. Read his full profile or the wider history of public relations for how that discipline formed alongside marketing.
The answers differ because "invented" can mean three different things, and each points to a different person. The table shows which name fits which definition.
| If "invented" means | Name to cite | Date |
|---|---|---|
| First university course using the word | Edward David Jones, University of Michigan | 1902 |
| First marketing course that became a textbook | Ralph Starr Butler, University of Wisconsin | About 1910 |
| The four Ps | E. Jerome McCarthy | 1960 |
| The standard textbook of the modern field | Philip Kotler | 1967 |
The practical lesson for marketers: credit goes to whoever names, teaches and publishes the framework everyone else uses. Jones and Butler taught the subject first. Kotler's textbook is the one students have shared for nearly sixty years.
No single person invented marketing. Edward David Jones and Ralph Starr Butler built the first university courses between 1902 and about 1910, and Philip Kotler's 1967 textbook Marketing Management codified the modern discipline.
Philip Kotler is the person most often called the father of modern marketing. He is named for Marketing Management (1967), not for inventing the word or the four Ps.
No. E. Jerome McCarthy popularized the four Ps in his 1960 textbook Basic Marketing. Kotler built them into Marketing Management.
Historians following Robert Bartels report that a 1902 University of Michigan course description by Edward David Jones was the first to use the word. Illinois and California offered similar distribution courses in the same academic year.
Neil Borden, a Harvard professor, used the phrase "marketing mix" in his 1953 American Marketing Association presidential address.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team is the staff byline for news, analysis and features on communications, reputation, AI visibility and digital discovery. Everything-PR has published since 2009. AI tools assist with research and drafting, and every article is reviewed by a human editor before publication. Coverage follows the Editorial Policy, and substantive corrections are noted on the article under the Corrections Policy.
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