If we want to know what a business is we have to start with its purpose. There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. It is the customer who determines what a business is. For it is the customer, and he alone, who through being willing to pay for a good or service, converts economic resources into wealth, things into goods. What the business thinks it produces is not of first importance -- especially not to the future of the business and its success. What the customer thinks he is buying, what he considers “value” is decisive ... Because it is [the purpose of a business] to create a customer, [the] business enterprise has two—and only these two—basic functions: marketing and innovation.
