I really hope one day you start your own online business and see how it's actually run.

It's one thing you imagine a business should be run in an utopian world where people respond to surveys and know exactly what they need to solve their issues (Henry Ford said it perfectly "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses") and another thing how it works in real world.

> Yes exactly - companies were in business just fine for over a century and they didn't have analytics, why should it suddenly be required?

This is a very ignorant response so I assume all your answers are the same.

> As far as I'm concerned online marketing is cancer.

I think you meant "advertising"... if yes, in some cases you're right.

> This is a very ignorant response so I assume all your answers are the same.

If that is ignorant then I guess most companies founded in the 20th century (without analytics, stalking and targeted advertising) must not be real then? In fact I'd argue most of the money that funds the cancer that is modern advertising, marketing, etc was made before such things were actually invented.

> I think you meant "advertising"

I kind of agree, and this is why I clarified my definition of marketing. For me, marketing is about putting your product in the best light possible on your website (or physical space if you're into retail), so that people who stumble upon your product (randomly or by searching for it) will be encouraged to buy it.

The modern definition of marketing however seems to be stalking (aka analytics), spam (newsletters, push notifications), creepy targeted advertising (often relying on the previous items) and so on, essentially forcing your product onto people who haven't asked anything. I consider this modern marketing to be cancer.

You know, before UX was captured by A/B test fanatics, there was a discipline known as "user testing". It had all kinds of interesting tools, for dealing with all kinds of user distribution and sample size.