Talk:History of marketing/Archives/2017


Marketing Orientations

I am pasting a table and some commentary in here in the hope that someone might see it and think about how it could be integrated into the page. A version of this material has also been posted on the talk page of the Marketing article

There is little consensus within the literature about what philosophies or mindsets actually constitute the "orientations." The following table (Table 1- Marketing Philosophies), from a reliable secondary source, highlights the variety of perspectives identified within the literature. As the table suggests, some authors collapse the production orientation and the product orientation; most refer to the selling orientation and the marketing orientation); some refer to the societal marketing orientation; some include other orientations such as the financial orientation and the erratic orientation which are not mentioned in the Wikipedia tables. Few sources refer to the holistic marketing. The so-called marketing orientations or philosophies should not be confused with eras or stages in the development of marketing thought. Orientations or philosophies refer to a mindset that shapes a given way of organising the business operations, and therefore is a way of thinking about marketing practice (but not necessarily marketing theory). The history of marketing thought refers to the way that marketing is studied or taught.

It should be evident from the following table that:

  • The social/mobile marketing era - has not been considered in any of the serious studies of the history of marketing
  • The positive word of mouth generation era - equally doesn't appear in any of the serious studies
  • The concepts of 'eras' and 'orientations' may have been conflated in some of the discussion in this article

Table 1: Marketing Philosophies or Orientations

Dibb & Simkin, 2004 Lancaster & Reynolds, 2005 Blythe, 2005 Drummmond & Ensor, 2005 Morgan, 1996
1. Production orientation 1. Production orientation 1. Production orientation 1. Production orientation 1. Cost philosophy
2. Financial orientation 2. Sales orientation 2. Product orientation 2. Product orientation 2. Product philosophy
3. Sales orientation 3. Marketing orientation 3. Sales orientation 3. Sales orientation 3. Production philosophy
4. Marketing orientation 4. Customer orientation 4. Financial orientation 4. Sales philosophy
5. Customer orientation 5. Societal marketing 5. Marketing orientation 5. Erratic philosophy
6. Competitor orientation 6. Relationship orientation 6. Marketing philosophy
7. Interfunctional orientation 7. Social marketing philosophy

Source: Dainora Grundey, "The Marketing Philosophy and Challenges for the New Millennium", Scientific Bulletin – Economic Sciences: Marketing, Commerce and Tourism, Vol. 9, no. 15, 2010, p. 170


Sources used by Grundey to compile the preceding table:

Blythe, J. Essentials of Marketing . 3rd Editon. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2005.

Dibb, S., Simkin, L. Marketing Briefs: A Revision and Study Guide . Second Editon. Burlington:Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, 2004.

Drummond, G., Ensor, J. Introduction to Marketing Concepts . Burlington: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, 2005.

Lancaster , G., Reynolds, P. Management of Marketing , Burlington: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, 2005.

Morgan, R.E., "Conceptual foundations of marketing and marketing theory", Management Decision , Vol. 34, no 10, pp. 19-26, 1996.

BronHiggs (talk) 00:48, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Major upgrade to content

I have begun a major overhaul of this page.

My plan was to split it into two several broad sections, as is evident in the lead. The sections that I envisaged for this article were as follows:

1.0 History of marketing: an overview

1.1. Broad overview of marketing practices from antiquity to current times
 Y Done

2.0 History of marketing practice

1.2. Marketing Orientations
 Y Done

2.0 History of marketing thought

2.2. Periodisation
Commenced, but unfinished. Very sorry, but I am unable to continue working on this section and bring it to a natural conclusion. (See notes below)

3.0 Intersections between marketing practice and marketing thought

Not started - but briefly mentioned in lead section. Unable to add to this section.

4.0 Timeline of innovation

Mostly pre-existing content, decided to retain it, have added to it a bit and have tried to add appropriate references, where possible; original prose contained possible copy vios but have tried to change prose and amend sequence so as to avoid copyright implications.
 Y Done


Where to from here? If anyone wants to have a go at developing the section on the history of marketing thought, here follows some useful, high quality and reliable references to help out. Most of these sources can be found on Google Books, Google Scholar or similar online sources - and many of which have been reprinted in anthologies and collections. If you use a Google search using the title of the article or chapter, you should be able to locate them relatively easily. As you can see, there is no shortage of very high quality material. These are the sources that I had planned to use if I was able to continue writing this material.

  • Alderson, W. (1958) "The Analytic Framework for Marketing," in Proceedings of the Conference of Marketing Teachers from Far Western States, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 15–31.

and reproduced in B. M. Enis, & K. Cox (Eds.), Marketing classics: A selection of influential articles, (6th ed.), pp. 22–32. Neddham, Mass.

  • Balas, "Evolution and Trends in the Study of Marketing Planning" , 2014, Online: www.balas.org/BALAS_2014_proceedings/data/documents/p712473.pdf
  • Bartels, R., The History of Marketing Thought. Columbus, Ohio: Grid, 1976
  • Bartels, R., The Development of Marketing Thought, in Marketing: Critical Perspectives on Business and Management, Michael John Baker (ed), Routledge, London, 2002, pp 92-113 [originally published in Science in Marketing, George Schwartz (ed), New York, John Wiley, pp 47-69]
  • Butler, R.S. and Swinney, J.B., Marketing and Merchandising, New York: Alexander Hamilton Institute, 1918
  • Cherington, P. T., Elements of marketing. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1920
  • Cano, C (2003) ‘The Recent Evolution of Market Segmentation Concepts and Thoughts Primarily by Marketing Academics’, in E. Shaw (ed), The romance of marketing history: proceedings of the 11th Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing (CHARM), Boca Ranton, FL: AHRIM, 2003.
  • Cassels, J.M., "The Significance of Early Economic Thought on Marketing," Journal of Marketing, (October). 1936, pp 129-133
  • Converse, P.D., "The Development of the Science of Marketing - An Exploratory Survey," Journal of Marketing, Vol 10 (July), 1945, pp 14-23
  • Cunningham, P., "The Textbooks of Philip Kotler: Their Role in Defining Marketing Thought and Practice," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol 31, no. 2, 2003 pp 201-212 .
  • Enright, Michael, "Marketing and Conflicting Dates for its Emergence: Hotchkiss, Bartels, the ‘Fifties School’ and Alternative Accounts," Journal of Marketing Management, vol 18, 2002, pp 445-461
  • Faria, A.J., "The Development of the Functional Approach to the Study of Marketing to 1940" in S.C. Hollander and R. Savitt (eds) First North American Workshop on Historical Research in Marketing, Lansing, MI: Michigan State University, 1983, pp. 160-169.
  • Fisk, R.P., Brown, W. and Bitner, M.J., "Tracking the Evolution of Services Marketing Literature," Journal of Retailing, vol. 41, (April), 1993
  • Hagerty, J.E., "Experiences of an Early Marketing Teacher," Journal of Marketing 1(20). 1936, p. 27
  • Hollander, S.C., "Some Notes on the Difficulty of Identifying the Marketing Thought Contributions of the Early Institutionalists," in C. Lamb and P. Dunne (eds) Theoretical Developments in Marketing, Chicago, IL: American Marketing Association, 1980, pp. 45-46.
  • Hollander, S.C., "Who and What are Important in Retailing and Marketing History: A Basis for Discussion," in S.C. Hollander and R. Savitt (eds) First North American Workshop on Historical Research in Marketing, Lansing, MI: Michigan State University, 1983, pp. 35-40.
  • Hotchkiss, G.B., Milestones of Marketing, New York: Macmillan, 1938
  • Hunt, Shelby D. and Goolsby, Jerry, "The Rise and Fall of the Functional Approach to Marketing: A Paradigm Displacement Perspective," in Historical Perspectives in Marketing: Essays in Honour of Stanley Hollander, Terence Nevett and Ronald Fullerton (eds), Lexington, MA, Lexington Books, pp 35-51 (full copy of chapter available online at sdh.ba.ttu.edu/Rise%20and%20Fall%20(88).pdf
  • Jones, D.G. Brian and Monieson, David(eds),"Early Development of the Philosophy of Marketing Thought," in Marketing: Critical Perspectives on Business and Management, Michael John Baker (ed), Routledge, London, 2002, pp 92-113 [originally published in the Journal of Marketing, vol. 54, January, 1990, pp 102-113]
  • Jones, F., "Retail Stores in the United States, 1800-1860," Journal of Marketing, October, 1936, pp 135-140
  • Kelley, W.T., "The Development of Early Thought in Marketing," Journal of Marketing, July, vol. 20, 1956, pp 62-67
  • Litman, S., "The Beginnings of Teaching Marketing in American Universities," Journal of Marketing, Vol. 15 (October), 1956, pp 220-223
  • Macinnis, Deborah J and Folkes, Valerie S., "The Disciplinary Status of Consumer Behavior:A Sociology of Science Perspective on Key Controversies," Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 36, April 2010
  • Maclaran, Pauline, Saren, Michael, Stern, Barbara and Tadajewski, Mark, The SAGE Handbook of Marketing Theory, London, Sage, 2010
  • Maynard, H.H., "Marketing Courses Prior to 1910," Journal of Marketing, Vol 5 (April), 1941, pp 382-384
  • Maynard, H.H., "Notes and Communications - Early Teachers of Marketing," Journal of Marketing, vol 7 (October), 1941, pp 158-159
  • Nevett, T., "Historical Investigation and the Practice of Marketing," Journal of Marketing, vol 55, no. 3, 1991, 13-23
  • Nystrom, P.H., "Retailing in Retrospect and Prospect," in H.G. Wales (ed.) Changing Perspectives in Marketing, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 19951, pp. 117-138.
  • Shaw, Eric H., "Teaching the History of Marketing Thought: An Approach", Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, Vol. 7 Iss: 2
  • Shaw, Eric H. and Jones, D.G. Brian, "A history of schools of marketing thought," Marketing Theory, vol. 5, no. 3 September, 2005 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1470593105054898
  • Shaw, Eric H., "Reflections on The History of Marketing Thought," Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, Vol 1, no. 2. 2009, pp 330-345 DOI: 10.1108/17557500910974640
  • Schwartz, G., Development of Marketing Theory, Cincinnati, OH: South-Western, 1963
  • Shapiro, S. and Doody, A., Readings in the History of American Marketing, Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin, 1968
  • Sheth, J.N. , Gardner, D.M. and Garrett, D.E., Marketing Theory: Evolution and Evaluation, New York: John Wiley, 1988
  • Sheth, Jagdish N. and Parvatiyar, Atul, "The Evolution of Relationship Marketing," International Business Review, Vo|. 4, No. 4, 1995, pp. 397-418
  • Tadajewski, Mark and Jones, D.G. Brian (eds), History of Marketing Thought, Vol. 1, [Sage Library of Marketing collection], Sage,
  • Usui, Kazuo, The Development of Marketing Management: The Case of the USA, C. 1910-1940, Aldershot, Hampshire, Ashgate, 2008
  • Vargo, S. and Lusch, R.F., "Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing," Journal of Marketing, Vol. 68, no. 1., 2004, pp 1-17
  • Volpato, Giuseppe and Stocchetti, Andrea, "Old and New Approaches to Marketing: The Quest of Their Epistemological Roots," In The Proceedings of 10th International Conference Marketing Trends January, 2009
  • Webster, F.E. Jr, "The Changing Role of Marketing in the Corporation," Journal of Marketing, Vol. 56, October, 1992, pp 1-17
  • Wendell R. Smith, "Product Differentiation and Market Segmentation as Alternative Marketing Strategies", Journal of Marketing, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Jul., 1956), pp. 3-8 and reprinted in Marketing Management, 1995 Vol.4 No.3, pp 63-65
  • Wilkie, W. and Moore, E., ‘Scholarly Research in Marketing: Exploring the Four Eras of Thought Development,’ Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, vol. 22 , Fall, 2003, pp 116-146

In addition, it may be worth noting that several journals and books have written short biographies of leading thinkers in marketing

  • Bartos, R. (1977) ‘Ernest Dichter: Motive Interpreter,’ Journal of Advertising Research, 17(3), pp 3-9
  • Naresh K. Malhotra (ed.), Review of Marketing Research: Special Issue - Marketing Legends Bingley, Uk, Emerald, 2011
  • Jagdish N Sheth, Legends in Marketing: Shelby D. Hunt, Sage, 2011
  • D.G. Brian Jones, Pioneers in Marketing: A Collection of Biographical Essays, Routledge Advances in Management and Business Studies, 1st Edition, 2012


Finally, it may be well worth looking at the following websites, which provide free access to seminal articles in the area of marketing: −

  • AMA History Portal

American Marketing Association, Marketing History (AMA) provides free unlimited access to classic articles e.g. Levitt's "Marketing Myopia" and Smith's "Market Segmentation and Product Differentiation"

  • CHARM Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing

Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing (CHARM) Selected conference papers are accessible online and summaries of other papers appear in the newsletter

BronHiggs (talk) 05:03, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

History of Marketing: Suggested Tasks for Restructure and Clean-Up

This page has many problems, some of which could be remedied quite easily. Major issues include:

Repetitive headings and content

There are two sub-headings entitled 1.1.Periodisation and 2.2 Periodisation - each with different content. In addition to that, another section entitled "Timeline" appears to cover territory similar to heading 1.1. Periodisation. All this content needs to be restructured within a sound conceptual framework. I recommend that Heading 1.1. and the Timeline be integrated into a single list and given a new heading along the lines of "Key Events in the History of Marketing" or similar heading that reflects the contents. The material covered in Heading 2.2. Periodisation belongs elsewhere and I recommend that this be moved to Traditional Schools- currently, a very perfunctory section lacking in any sense of purpose or direction. I suspect that the editor who contributed this material may have been referring to the so-called marketing eras, namely the production era, sales era, societal marketing era and customer-orienation marketing era.

Recommendation: Content from heading 2.2. could be added to Traditional Schools", this would round out the section reasonably well. Alternatively, a decision needs to be made as to whether these concepts should be included in Periodisation or Traditional Schools and content moved accordingly. It is not appropriate to have two identical headings with entirely different content.

It is also worth noting that many critics dismiss the marketing eras as over-simplistic and failing to recognise that all approaches are still practised today. It is for this reason that marketers tend to refer to "marketing orientations" rather than 'eras' or 'periodisation'. Finally, it is also worth noting that there are ongoing debates in relation to dating the onset and conclusion of each of the eras.

 Y Done

Lack of Focus (Lead Section) The lead section goes off on its own tangent and begins by discussing "digital marketing" in the 1980s and then proceeds to provide a definition of "network protocols" and mentions the launch of Yahoo! This is a very disjointed discussion, and its relevance to a general history of marketing is unclear. This material needs to be integrated into the main discussion. In any case, the lead section is intended to provide a brief overview of the key themes in the main article. It should NOT be introducing new ideas in a fragmented and piecemeal manner. In my view, this content could be deleted entirely with no loss of overall value. However, it might be possible to integrate some of it - e.g. the launch of Yahoo! into other sections such as the Timeline

Recommendation:  Y Done

Lack of Focus (History of Marketing Thought) The lead section is at pains to point to a distinction between 'marketing thought' and 'marketing practice. This is fair enough. However, the section entitled 'history of marketing thought' devotes more than half of its contents to marketing practices. Thus, the section loses its focus and does not live up to the promise implied in the heading.

Recommendation: This section needs an overhaul with a determination to explain the distinctive features of marketing thought, and what sets it apart from marketing practice. In addition, I would recommend that superior sources be found for some of the more important ideas. This requires the input of someone with expertise in the area

Cut and Paste (History of Marketing Practice)

The first three paragraphs of 'History of Marketing Practice' are almost a direct quote from KnowThis.com - History of Marketing - with only the occasional change to a word here or there. This type of wholesale copying from an online source is not in accordance with Wikipedia's policies and may constitute a breach of copyright. This section needs to be removed or substantially rewritten, preferably with the aim of integrating it with other sections on this page that deal with the history of marketing thought. (Curiously, this section had incorrectly given the source as KnowThis.com - The Role of Marketing), but I have amended it to read the correct page source, so that at least any reader can find the original prose on the correctly labelled page.

Recommendation: Go through this section, carefully paraphrasing the prose. Try to change about 80% of the words from the original

 Y Done

Conceptual Problems/ Errors of Interpretation

Conceptual problems/ Errors of interpretation are numerous - and it would be impossible to enumerate them all here.

  • Marketing practitioners are likely to take issue with some of the more outrageous claims, and therefore these need a lot of support. Wikipedia's guideline is that claims that are likely to be controversial require a greater burden of proof. Secondary sources must be provided to support these claims, or the language should be toned down a bit.

Example: "Unlike economists, marketers have difficulties organising the different theories into schools of thought" (unsourced). Do they really? This doesn't sound like a consensus viewpoint.

Recommendation: Either find a source, or amend this statement

 Y Done

Confusion

The so-called marketing eras (or perhaps more accurately termed marketing orientations) set out in section 2.2. is confused and potentially misleading. This section opens with the following:

"One marketing standard chronology (Bartels, 1974; Dawson, 1969; Keith, 1960; Kotler and Keller, 2006) subdivides marketing history as follows:

   Production orientation era
   Product orientation era
   Sales orientation era
   Market orientation era
   Customer orientation
   Relationship orientation
   Social/mobile marketing orientation
   Positive Word of Mouth generation.

Clearly this list has been derived from multiple sources (in spite of the introductory sentence), with little or no attempt to integrate the ideas or terminology used by different authors. What, for example, is the distinction between the production orientation and the product orientation? What happened to the "societal marketing" concept? When did mobile marketing and positive word-of-mouth generation become eras or orientations? Even the term, "positive word of mouth generation' gives us a clue that the author is talking about a generation - that is a group of people born around the same time rather than a concept used to describe a particular way that marketing is practised (i.e. an orientation). This list is highly misleading, and fails to provide an accurate representation of the accepted marketing orientations in the literature.

Recommendation: It seriously needs to be cleaned up, preferably with reference to a single reliable source such as Kotler. (If multiple sources are used, then the editor would require sufficient subject matter expertise to recognise when different authors are discussing the same orientation, but using different labels and also, when obscure authors are trying to get a pet topic on the agenda without general support from peers).

 Y Done

Please Help

I would be more than happy to undertake these and other revisions, but there is an over-zealous editor who objects to my contributions (on the grounds that he or she doesn't like my "tone" (i.e., my style of writing); doesn't believe that I understand what it means to be "encyclopedic"; considers that there is "some content that just doesn't belong on Wikipedia"; is of the view that editing should not be "easy" and that I have not shown a willingness to "adapt to the Wikipedia" way of doing things) and has previously deleted my contributions on the 'history of marketing' on the Marketing page. For this reason, I am reluctant to make any further substantive changes to content on marketing pages. However, I am still willing to add references and make minor changes to grammar. I am posting these comments in a step-by-step way in the hope that someone out there might tackle at least some of these issues, so that over time the quality of the page might be improved. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BronHiggs (talkcontribs) 01:10, 21 October 2016 (UTC) BronHiggs (talk) 01:32, 21 October 2016 (UTC) BronHiggs (talk) 05:51, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Removal of tags/ restructure of article

I have removed the large number of tags that adorned this article; both tags at the head of the page and those buried within the article. All these tags dated back to 2008. This was a good faith removal as I believe all issues have been addressed satisfactorily. The article has been completely restructured to allow the distinction between history of marketing practice and history of marketing thought to stand out more clearly - and these topics now serve as an organising framework for the article. A totally new section outlining a more general history of marketing including some of the debates about dating the origin of marketing has been added to the opening of the article. Both sections on history of marketing practice and history of marketing thought have been completely reconceptualised, revised and expanded. High quality references to seminal literature in the field have been added to support all substantive claims, concepts and theories. Terminology, especially periodisation, orientations and schools of thought, has been clarified, with appropriate definitions added and the revised content modified to reflect these more accurate definitions and conceptualisations. In the earlier version of the article the terms, orientations and periods were conflated and confused, leading to confusing and contradictory explanations- but this has now been remedied.)

To add some polish to the article, relevant images (all sourced from wiki commons) have also been added, not solely for interest and to provide anchor points to key concepts throughout the article. One summary table has also been added for the sake of variety and brevity. In the not too distant future, when I have a bit more time, I may add another summary table. Appropriate wikilinks have been added at different junctures to integrate this article with other related articles relevant to the history of marketing. The passage about O'Malley and Lichrou in the schools of thought section could arguably be deleted. O'Malley and Lichrou are not marketing historians of any note and there are far superior sources such as Jones and Shaw who are better known for their broad surveys of marketing history. Hopefully the article is much clearer, better written and reflects the current thinking about marketing's history. Although more could be done to expand the descriptions of the schools of thought at some point in the future, I believe that the current article is now of an acceptable quality for an encyclopedia and no longer needs the tags. BronHiggs (talk) 00:30, 14 May 2017 (UTC)