"Economic growth is by definition a continuous increase in production.". Products and services? But is not just increasing products, right? These products should be perceived as more valuable than old products, right? I'm starting to think that the perceive of value is more important than anything else. Kind of the bank race: if everybody wants to withdraw, it crashs, so the system depends that people believe their money is safe there, as for economic growth people needs to believe the products worth more.

@Jp_ it’s about both value and quantity. For example if in year t economy can produce one apple in year t+1 2 apples and in year t+2 3 apples and so on it would be considered growth. One apple may still have the same value to people but there is more apples to go around. However, also if there would be just one apple produced each year but it would be continuously improved in quality making it more valuable it would also count.

But apples are consumed fast, so I might want to stick to the situation where the same amount of apples are produced every year. You are saying the growth, in this situation, comes because the apples improved in quality, but it could also be the same quality and just be advertised as better. Would it result in a real economic growth?

@Jp_ Apples are just as an example. You can use composite goods and services (G&S) bundles if you want to be more accurate. There is not much evidence that marketing can deliver growth. The economic growth is measured by looking at inflation adjusted growth of market value of final G&S. In order for marketing to deliver that it would have to continuously convince people that the goods produced have higher and higher value in real terms. I don’t know of any mechanism that could do that in marketing. Also, for growth it is not enough to have one of increase in value or production of something

By what you are saying I see a great contribution of marketing in economic growth. And I don't mean only advertisement, our brains are easy to be tricked. A new launch with minimal changes in features (maybe only a re-brand), already obsolete the old and renew the value. I was trying to think in examples in technology, but for what I said I thought about toys for kids. But it could be extrapolate in some degrees for other markets as well.

@Jp_ I agree that marketing adds to the GDP of country, but let me stress again just an increases in GDP is not really economic growth it’s increase in level of GDP. Also although marketing does contributes to the economic activity it’s contribution is not as high as you might think. Marketing itself is not even big enough to have its own category on most national accounts. I tried to even find its contribution to the GDP but could not in national accounts because its coupled with other industries but I found source (see end of next comment) according to which it is about 1 percent of GDP even

In the most service oriented economies such as UK or US. Also, even if you see contribution of marketing increase over time it’s is most often not due to marketing itself but underlying technologies such as internet etc. which allow for more efficient ‘production’ of marketing services. To the extent marketing grows GDP due to access to new technologies it’s the technology causing the growth not marketing. Promised source thecreativeindustries.co.uk/industries/advertising/…

To add to the previous answer. To show that marketing leads to economic growth you would have to show that assuming all other factors such as population growth or technology growth are constant/stagnant, the marketing itself can continuously increase GDP year after year. I would agree that in can raise the level of GDP one time but without technology growth or other factors I know of no mechanism how it could lead to actual economic growth.

Yes, I do completely agree with the analysis. Marketing itself does not make a particular good or product have a higher value. The "real" utility of the good, and hence value, to the consumer has not changed. Marketing itself is a service and hence, value can be associated to it.

But as pointed out, I doubt any economy thrives because it has a large marketing industry. Marketing is just like an accessory service.

I would see its role as more of an information provider, helping people to make consumption decisions. It does help to better communicate the value of products to consumers and allow them to make a better decision when it comes to making purchases.