EN
Marketing in Europe is regarded as a special function and section of the theory of enterprise economics, while in USA it is considered to be the economic discipline sui generis. The potential object of the research includes social life as a whole with all types of enterprises, and with the human being in the centre - that means that the theory of enterprise economics and marketing appears to be (just as applied sociology and psychology) in a certain sense against the other disciplines. The marketing processes and phenomena are an extraordinary complex, influenced by many factors and determined by the human behaviour. Plurality of the aims and the behaviour patterns often enable to formulate only the stochastic statements. The article concludes with an assessment of the specific definitions of marketing over the last four decades to explain how the nature of marketing has evolved in the time.