Marketing

A Brief History of Modernity and its Organization of Life

Inspired by the ideas of the Renaissance, when artists of the day emphasized the significance of the human being as a subject for study and representation in contrast to angels and demons, which had been the focus of art works until then, modern thinkers of the Enlightenment squarely put the material concerns for humanity, such as the anatomy of the human body and the physics of the solar system, at the center of their discourses. Eventually, for modern thought, an opposition developed between the material conditions of the universe and the spiritual concerns of traditional cultures. As a result, a new set of norms to guide humanity as a society of modern subjects was formulated (Steuerman 1992).

Being a modern subject meant that one could participate in the determination of one’s destiny, as part of the destiny of humanity. One’s fate was no longer believed to be preordained by powers above and beyond the conditions of the material universe; nor beyond the human subject who could act as part of that universe and increasingly take control over it by scientifically, thus objectively and accurately, knowing the laws of its workings. This “knowing subject” of modernity, in opposition to the “being subject” of traditional cultures (Rorty 1979), would further be armed with the technologies and means of organizing society, so that his or her powers to take control over humanity’s future would be maximized.

Jürgen Habermas, informed by Weber’s work, articulates the norms of the discursive domains of modern human existence (Foster 1983). According to this insight into modernity, three discursive domains are significant: (1) science, (2) art, and (3) morality. The norms of modern thought suggest that these domains should remain separate, each with its own principles. The principles of the domain of science are reason and objectivity. These principles assure that the knowledge generated will not be biased and ensure that what humans know about the universe is its true laws. The principle of the domain of art is the aesthetic, specifically beauty. Finally, the principles of the domain of morality are justice and fairness.

Of these three, science is the most central since it is the domain that will empower humanity to control nature and the future. Consequently, in modern thought, it was considered paramount that the domain of science ought not be contaminated by the principles of the other domains; that the principles of the domain of science needed to remain pure. Otherwise, considerations of beauty and justice would or could thwart what should be discovered objectively, without regard for what is perceived to be aesthetic (beautiful) or moral (just).

In modernity’s quest to empower humanity, other more practical domains of modern culture have also emerged. Culture—all that is constructed by humans—as the means to take control over from nature—all that is given to humanity—further separated into political, social, and economic domains. Similar to the discursive domains, these practical domains also had their principles in order to establish the norms by which a modern society needed to operate to fulfill the modern project, the building of a grand future for humanity by controlling nature through scientific technologies (Angus 1989).

Democracy, civility, and efficient allocation of material resources are, respectively, the principles of the political, social, and economic domains. As domains in and through which human beings will realize the modern project, institutions had to be constituted within these domains to enable humans to exercise the principles. These institutions are the media utilized to act out the principles.

The nation-state is the modern institution to practice democracy in the political domain. The concept of the nation and the organization of the human population into nations provide the foundations for nation-states to be formed. Historically, several institutions have developed in the social domain for the exercise of civility. First among these is the modern nuclear family. Other civil institutions include educational and nongovernmental institutions.

With greater entrenchment of modernity, the economic domain increasingly took center stage among all the practical domains. It has largely become the locomotive of modern society and all modern human activity. This is understandable, given the importance of the material in human life and the fact that the economic sphere is the one concerned with the distribution of material resources. In countering the impositions of the material universe on humanity, such as floods and earthquakes spoiling human efforts to take control of human lives, the modern response has been to surround humanity with material products of its own making, ranging from dams and irrigation systems to medicine. Thus, as more of the human environment was constituted of products of humanity, nature’s control over humanity would be eroded. The economic domain would provide the efficient allocation of resources, thus maximizing productivity. In effect, material concerns were inscribed in the basic tenets of modern thought. Consequently, economic growth and the growth of personal consumption of products became the benchmark for judging human development.

The Market

Not surprising, therefore, the medium through which efficient economic activity is made possible according to modern thought—the market—is also central and highly hegemonic in contemporary human lives. Modernist thinkers were concerned about developing the norms and institutions that would afford control to human beings, freeing them from all impositions, by nature or by other human beings, so that (1) they could exercise their free wills, (2) through the recognition of reasoned needs and goals based on scientific knowledge, and (3) realize their human potentials in building a grand future for humanity. Thus, just as the nation-state would constitute the foundation upon which humans could be organized to practice democracy in the political domain to realize these modernist goals, so early modernist economists, such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, envisioned the market as the basis to assure that the economic domain would also have a medium for modernist goals to be achieved. This needed to be a medium that would free human beings from all obligations that could impose upon their free wills and provide independence from influences, so that they could and would make the most reasoned choices, guided solely by scientific knowledge, toward establishing the grand future for humanity. It seems that the marketplaces early modern economists observed provided the vision for this medium.

The modern market has been envisioned as the means whereby all obligations would be removed for the modern individual (Fırat and Tadajewski 2010). Here was an institution (but what modern economists envisioned as a mechanism) that would organize relations so that individuals could meet, some with their products and others with their resources, simply to exchange and to procure what they desired, based on their free and independent wills. This independence was afforded because they did not need to have any obligations to each other. They did not need to know each other nor did they need to worry about hardships the other may have had to endure to have access to resources or products being exchanged. Before and after the exchange, they would not have to feel any obligations toward each other. This market exchange compared well to earlier (premodern) exchange experiences where all sorts of obligations accompanied the exchange, based on kinship, feudal customs, and other relations (Polanyi 1977). When all social obligations were so removed, exchanges would be based solely on the equity of values of the exchanged products and resources (money being the key means of exchange as modernity developed), a principle necessary to assure the efficient allocation of material resources. Similar to the domain of science, which should not be contaminated by the principles of other discursive domains, many now believed that the economic domain ought not be contaminated by the principles of other practical domains.

Marketing

Marketing is the institutionalization of practices through which market exchanges are organized and executed as imagined in modern culture. Thinking of marketing simply as practices performed by organizations (business or otherwise), to facilitate and promote exchanges (Bagozzi 1975; Kotler 1972), limits our ability to grasp the contemporary human condition completely. As we recognize and articulate marketing as institutionalized practices that in modernity work to reinforce and expand the market, an institution that constructs the complex of desire and its means for diffusion and execution, we shall also have a deeper understanding of why and how it has diffused as a global ideology. In effect, we realize the temporality and contextuality of this institution.

With the “economic” taking center stage, the market eventually became the hegemonic institution in modern life. Increasingly, all political and social discourse in modern society also adopted the vernacular of the market, that is “marketing-speak!” The vocabulary of the “free market” has replaced the language of democracy as the means by which the modern project of freeing the human individual from oppression of all sorts is to be accomplished. What many have termed neoliberalism—the idea that freeing the market to operate according to its own laws will be the insurance for humanity’s liberation from all oppression (and obligation)—has now replaced liberalism—the idea that democracy, as the political principle, along with other modern principles will altogether assure human rights and liberties to accomplish the modern project.

This neoliberal orientation has been diffused globally with the advent of modern globalization. The modern institution of the market, which has its own principles and norms to be obeyed, such as the necessity of the equity of the values exchanged, has ironically clashed with traditional marketplaces because they did not always follow the institution’s rules during contemporary globalization (Diawara 1998). Despite some resistance from traditional marketplaces and other nonmarket systems that remain, the global diffusion of the modern market is largely complete.

With this diffusion, the language of all cultural discourses has been infused with the language of marketing. Marketing has become the culture of communication and the only mode of cultural discourse. Consequently, all public discussion increasingly reproduces the mode of advertising, the central form of public marketing communication (Miller 1988). In a world where all discourse is mediated by communication and information technologies, marketing becomes the culture of the time. It is not coincidental, therefore, that all relations among human beings, even including relations among family members, model the marketing sensibility; where one’s identity and existence need to be “marketed,” so as to achieve a high “market value” in others’ estimation.

All institutions of modern societies now work within this marketing logic, even if not openly admitted. Can we, for example, disagree that all discourse in political elections is marketing discourse? All sound bites are modeled after advertising slogans used in product marketing, all written and oral communications from the political candidates and their campaign teams are based on slogans and positions tested in polls and “market” research conducted with specific voting blocks, rather than on expansively argued, supported, or analytically developed principles. In effect, even when not working in marketing jobs per se, everyone has to follow the dicta of the logic of the modern marketing institution if they wish to be effective.

On the surface, this process may even seem democratic because it seems to be responding to the will of the public. In effect, the principles of modern marketing seem to model the espoused principles of modern democracy. Marketing is said, as marketing academics are well aware, to be about discovering what the public needs and then delivering products. In marketing-speak, products are anything—goods, services, ideas, persons—for which there is actual or potential demand. To fulfill these demands, marketing acts by informing organizations that can produce the products about the demands and by informing the public of the availability of the products once they are produced.

Difficulties with Modern Marketing Ideology

Classical economics envisions atomicity of resources and availability of perfect information for consumers in order for markets and competition to work properly. In the real world, however, these conditions are rare. Similarly, the theory of modern marketing also encounters the actual world where its ideals do not operate as imagined and/or hoped. In many of the cases where a need is perceived, people often do not know about all existing and, more importantly, potential options. They often do not have all of the information necessary to evaluate available alternatives, let alone alternatives for which resources and technologies may be present but are not available. Much of the information required is too technical and specialized, understandable by and available to the very few and hard to access even with considerable effort. Consequently, most of the information that people have is information assembled and disseminated by organizations with marketing intentions and, given the discussions above, in accordance with the marketing logic. This phenomenon is another indication that marketing is an institution of modernity, unavoidable in modern life.

It can be said that the modern marketing institution is charged with informing the public of (1) all actual and future potential desires based on current trends, (2) the alternatives available for fulfilling them, and (3) enough information so that fully knowledgeable decisions can be made. Yet, given the modern organization of this institution, it executes this charge only partially and distortedly. Only alternatives that are produced are communicated. Furthermore, as Michael Pertschuk, former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, expressed on a Smithsonian Institution (1991) documentary, Selling the Dream,

That is, information gets disseminated effectively when there are resources behind it and often if guided by a market interest.

Globalization and the Future

The ideology of globalized marketing serves the purpose of expanding the market. In this sense, it is unidimensional. Everything that expands the market is good and anything that hinders this expansion is bad. We have heard this sensibility expressed in the speeches of presidents and prime ministers for many decades. The health of the market is heralded above all, even above the health of the people. Those who think that the market is simply a “mechanism” without any vested interest are, consequently, greatly mistaken. The market is an institution that has its principles and norms and practices, constituted to advance its enlargement. Maintaining and reinforcing this enlargement is inscribed in the institutional practices that constitute modern marketing.

It is arguable that globalization has been present since early human history. By all archaeological indications, humans spread throughout the world tens of thousands of years ago and even when on separate continents maintained contacts for different purposes. The most recent manifestation of globalization aims at the primary goal of expanding global markets in the interest of economic growth. As was evident in the declarations of the President of the United States, Barack Obama, while visiting Pacific Rim countries in 2011, the endlessly repeated rationale underlying political advances and human initiatives is the healthy expansion of the market (Calmes 2011). The entrenchment of the neoliberal ideology among powerful players across the world, where vocal declarations of support are no longer unusual or surprising, is a strong indication of just how strong the institution of the market has become in modern culture. Almost no one any longer questions why the health of the market and its expansion should precede the health of human beings. It is taken for granted that the only means to humanity’s health is through the health of the market. This ideology is incessantly voiced in the mainstream media, which is increasingly global and increasingly owned by fewer corporate interests.

All of the developments discussed above make it more and more difficult for the culture of marketing to change. There almost exists a vicious cycle such that increasingly the marketing logic has to be used in order to effectively initiate any change, but utilizing the marketing logic reinforces its institutionalization. The appearance of this vicious cycle may even tend to lead to agreement with proclamations of the “end of history” (Fukuyama 2006). As with revolutionary changes across much of history (Hardt and Negri 2000), a new “constituting imaginary” that gets traction in the public’s mind is needed before current marketing ideology will loosen its hegemonic hold over global culture. For a new imaginary to get a footing, a persuasive exposé of the current human condition, along with a convincing presentation of a potential organization of life that captures the imagination, is required. As we realize and persuasively expose the fact that the market as a modern institution and marketing as its institutionalized set of practices have dominated contemporary global ideology, humanity may be able to constitute and reconstitute other institutions—institutions that may be better to serve a richer, diverse, multidimensional existence.