I am often surprised at the shallow definition some have of marketing or its true meaning…. but I would not expect this from a top business school and marketing association.

According to a new article published by eMarketer, Fuqua and the AMA fielded a survey last month among 581 marketing executives “to find out how top marketing officers around the country are dealing with adverse economic conditions.”  Here’s a deck that Duke created to present the research findings.

I have not seen the survey to see the exact wording of the questions but the article says that price dominated when the CMOs were asked about customers’ top priorities in the next year.   Here’s a graphic of how their answers shook out:

 I would respectfully propose that this is a serious problem of garbage in, garbage out.   Concepts such as “innovation” and “trusting relationship” – particularly the latter – address the very essence of a brand.  No one is going to say they love Apple because of their “relationship” with the company.  Price and quality can be seen and touched: trust and value cannot be. 

That does not mean that the latter concepts are less important – they are in fact, what drive the notion of “value” (which, after all, is only a product’s competitive blend of price and quality) over a long period of time. 

But on their own, ideas such as these are not palpable to the average buyer.  My ”relationship” with a brand is like oxygen:  I can’t see it, but I know when it’s there and when it’s not. 

And I’m not even going to get into how truly problematic it is to force-rank “brand” as a consumer priority on a list that also features “price” and “quality” during a recession.   Big-time apples and oranges.