My Mom was by no means a marketing executive in the way we understand the term today – she was in fact an elementary school teacher back in her hometown in the Philippines. She was close to the market, but in a literal sense: she went to the town’s wet market daily for our foodstuff. When I was a kid she’d usually bring me to the wet market just so I would not have to drive my Dad crazy at home. Looking back, it is these early “shopping” expeditions with my Mom that gave me my first real-world lessons about Marketing. Theorists like Kotler and others may have put some structure to the discipline but as far as I’m concerned my Mom was the true wellspring of marketing wisdom.