Page 263 - The Drucker Lectures

244 [ The Drucker Lectures

Within the next 10 years, you will again see a major change
in what we mean by marketing. It will continue to mean tech-
niques to support selling. And it will also mean the business as
seen from the customer. But what the market is—what the cus-
tomer wants now—is increasingly going to be defined in terms
of information: what is it that the customer sees, hears, and per-
ceives in that information market of the Internet.
And so we will have to learn to redefine the business—even
local ones like restaurants and hospitals—in terms of a market
that knows no distances and cannot be defined in terms of ge-
ography. This is, I know, very unsatisfactory. At least I am very
unsatisfied with it. But I think it augurs a fundamental change
ahead of us, not just in terms of marketing but in terms of defin-
ing institutions and defining businesses.

From a lecture given at Claremont Graduate University.