The Hindu Business Line : Kotler's focus on Asia-specific strategies

After inspiring marketing professionals for generations, global marketing guru Dr Philip Kotler, 75, has kicked off fresh research with an objective of evolving new marketing strategies suited for Asian needs.

Asia has arrived. And hence, the customers in the economies in this region, particularly China and India, deserve marketing strategies that reflected native cultures and people's buying habits. Realising this, Dr Kotler has felt the need for a new marketing strategy that would help marketing professionals working in the region understand how people thought and bought.

This was very important as the region would emerge as a dominant economic force in the next two decades, Mr S. Sriram, Executive Director of the Great Lakes Institute of Management, said, speaking on the objective of Dr Kotler's study.

"Almost all of marketing theories are based on Western experiences. What worked for marketing managers in the West need not work in the East. People in the East shop completely differently. We need to evolve specific strategies for the specific needs of the Asian countries," he said. The Chennai-based institute would act as a platform for the US marketing expert to carry out the research.

A group of students from the institute would assist Dr Kotler in carrying out the research.

He would arrive on July 16 and address the Chennai and Bangalore seminars on the following two days.

Dr Kotler, whose book `Marketing Management' is considered to be the bible of marketing, authored a number of books that dealt with marketing, social marketing, marketing for tourism, hospitality, and non-profit organisations, attracting investments and marketing sins.