marketers can create needs

Philip Kotler (1984:4) defines marketing as: "A social process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others." There are many concepts wrapped up in this definition that need to be developed separately. Needs and wants are two key marketing concepts. People need many things in order to live. Items such as air, food, and water are basic to human survival and are thus required. People also have strong preferences for other goods and services. Some embellish on basic needs, while others revolve around more abstract concepts such as recreation and education. Marketing does not create needs and wants; these pre-exist. Marketing acts to influence wants, by pointing out how a good or service may fulfill a desire.

Customers have needs and marketing identifies those needs and based on the company's capabilities, defines product and/or service characteristics that satisfy some or all of those needs. Then, marketing communicates the product features and benefits to the customers in such a way that they can realize how the product and/or service satisfies their needs and they select and purchase that product. Marketing does not create needs.

One area of confusion on this point is when a company comes out with a "new to the world" product. Since there has been no such product before, how can there have been needs? An example of this is the PC. No one had a computer in their house until the PC was invented. So how can you measure the needs of the customer for a PC. Surely, marketing, in specifying the PC, created a need. This logic is flawed. There were needs that were not met or not met fully before the PC came along - for document creation, games, communications, etc. All of these needs were met via other technological solutions: typewriter, board and card games, telephone and mail. With a little debatability, the PC does in fact better satisty these needs, but the needs where there before.
Marketing doesn't create needs. Needs are what people have before the marketer shows up. Smart marketers identify unmet needs and look for ways to satisfy those needs and make a profit at the same time.

This is an old topic, and the answer hasn't changed in a hundred years. Marketers satisfy needs, they don't create them.
Marketers must try to understand the target market's needs, wants and demands. Needs are basic human desires. Wants are shaped by one's society. Demands are wants for specfic products backed by an ability to pay.
Marketers do not create needs - needs pre-exist marketers. Marketers, along with society influence wants.
There are five types of needs that marketers need to understand:
Stated needs
real needs
unstated needs
delight needs
secret needs.
Marketing doesn't CREATE the need. Instead, the function of marketing (strategic, marketing comms, and PR) is to identify the obvious "real" needs of the target market as well as to uncover the hidden "latent" needs and then to get the customer to self-discover those needs.

I NEED a car to get to work; I don't NEED heated seats. But, once a marketeer makes me aware that I live in a cold climate, then at that point, I really WANT heated seats.