The International office of the American Marketing Association has redefined the word “marketing,” to reflect its broader role in society.

The new definition reads: “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

The previous definition stated: “Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.”

Wikipedia defines the term this way: “Marketing is a societal process that is needed to discern consumers’ wants; focusing on a product/service to those wants, and to mould the consumers towards the products/services.”

Some very interesting differences between the definitions. The AMA revisits the definition for marketing every five years in a disciplined effort to reflect on the state of the marketing field. How would you define marketing?