Economics is about exchange- people, businesses, and other organizations exchanging one thing for another. Production is about making that something of value which is exchanged. Accounting is about recording and reporting exchanges. Marketing is about making those exchanges happen, and about establishing the environment in which they can happen. In the very crude economies that characterized human existence before the twentieth century, and that still do exist in many parts of the world, marketing is not central to exchange. But in our current economic order, which happily involves making many economic choices, the role of marketing is central.