Abstract
The present article is the compendium of the 12 schools of thought (namely, ‘commodity’, ‘functional’, ‘regional’, ‘institutional’, ‘functionalist’, ‘managerial’, ‘buyer behaviour’, ‘activist’, ‘macro-marketing’, ‘organizational dynamics’, ‘systems’ and ‘social exchange’) in the marketing discipline since its inception in the early 1900s. These 12 schools of thought belong to the four quadrants on the two dimensions, namely ‘Interactive/Non-interactive’ perspective and ‘Economic/Non-economic’ perspective. The similarities, dissimilarities and focal points of these schools of thought have been briefly discussed. The article highlights, how the focal points across the schools of marketing thought have been continuously changing. The major contributions under these schools have also been discussed. Further, the article provided a general overview and criticism of these schools of the marketing discipline. The article further discusses the five controversies around the history of marketing, which are about the dominant perspective in marketing, the relationship between marketing and society, homogeneity of the internal subdivisions of marketing, the debate about marketing as science or arts and the creation of the general theory of marketing. The article also discusses the important issue of plugging the gap between the academic and managerial perspectives of the marketing theories.
Introduction
This article is a discussion on the rich heritage of the marketing discipline. This heritage is spread over almost 100 years. The modern marketing concept has evolved in various stages, and many authors have contributed to these stages. It is not an easy task to summarize these theories across various stages in one article, given the complexity. This present article tries to compress the underlying themes in each of the schools of thought ever since history was chronicled from the early 1900s.
There are three reasons for writing this article; the first is to prepare a compact reference for the use of present-day’s marketing academicians. There is limited evidence of the articles that introduce the rich history of the various marketing perspectives. The fall 1983 issue of the ‘Journal of Marketing’ and several books published on marketing theory in that period started this debate (Sheth et al., 1988). There are a few review articles and two books on the subject of schools of marketing thought: Bartels’ (1988) The History of Marketing Thought and Sheth et al.’s (1988) Marketing Theory: Evolution and Evaluation. Then the question arises, why another compendium of marketing history.
Unfortunately, the review articles because of their limitations could focus only on the history of a specific school, or a sub-area within a school. These articles could not capture the wide landscape of the entire marketing thought (Asih et al., 2020; El-Ansary et al., 2018; Palmer et al., 2005). Similarly, Bartels’ (1988) book is focussed on the sub-areas of marketing, rather than schools of thought. This book narrates the general history of marketing as an academic discipline, organized chronologically, rather than a focus on schools of marketing thought.
However, the book by Sheth et al. (1988) is the most comprehensive work on schools of marketing thought. This book majorly focusses on the theoretical evaluation of these schools. This is the reason the present article picks the works of Sheth et al. (1988) to summarize the marketing schools. It is imperative to know the history of the development of marketing thought for understanding the roots and foundation of marketing. Beyond this, we need a proper discussion on these theories for capitalizing on their strengths and look for any possible weaknesses in the earlier theories.
The second reason for writing this article is the identity crisis being faced by the marketing discipline because of the five controversies around its history. These controversies are related to the dominant perspective in marketing, the relationship between marketing and society, homogeneity of the internal subdivisions of marketing, the debate about marketing as science or arts and the creation of the general theory of marketing (Sheth et al., 1988). Sheth et al. (1988) argued that, at one point in time, one particular thought prevailed in the marketing theories; such as, during the 1960s and 1970s, consumer behaviour was the dominant perspective and, in the 1980s, it was the strategic marketing that prevailed in marketing theories. The second controversy as mentioned by Sheth et al. (1988) is about the relationship between marketing and society. Poor utilization of the scarce environmental resources had sparked the debate about the marketing discipline’s responsibility towards society and, therefore, marketing theories started including environment-related issues also. The absence of a distinct identity still plagues the marketing domain. The third dilemma is regarding the domain or boundary of marketing. It is becoming increasingly difficult to delineate a clear boundary for marketing. Within the organization and outside, the scope of marketing has transgressed far and wide, but without much clarity on what encompasses the marketing discipline. The fourth controversy about marketing is its status as science or arts. This debate is continuing since the 1950s. The fifth controversy is for the creation of a general theory in marketing. As marketing became more sophisticated and got wide, it started looking fragmented because scholars addressed only a limited area of marketing’s domain when they tried to develop new theories.
Another objective of this article is to assess the relevance of the schools of thought for present-day marketers and academicians. The article further suggests ways to plug the gap between the perspectives held by academicians and practitioners. The present article contributes to the existing marketing literature in two ways. First, it provides a ready-reckoner to the marketing scholars about the evolution of marketing theories and the controversies around the marketing domain. Second, it discusses the critical factor of covering the gap between the academicians’ and practitioners’ perspectives of marketing theories. Examples abound from practice indicating how connected or disconnected corporations are from reality. Marketing practices adopted by organizations have found their way into textbooks and have been accepted as beacons of marketing practice (Tadajewski, 2010). There is a need to be attentive to the usage of certain categories of concepts and ask questions as to why they appear as legitimate practices. A careful assessment of how the schools of thought have progressed versus the need for an integrative approach will help plug the gap in our opinion between theory and practice.
This article draws extensively from Sheth et al. (1988) who put forth a classification capturing the evolution in 12 schools of thought. Contrarian opinions exist though. Shaw and Jones (2005), who also attempted to summarize the importance of marketing schools of thought, are critical of the earlier works in this realm and contend that such papers miss the wider landscape of their fit with other schools and the whole marketing thought. In their paper, they called for a greater fit and integration between each school, which can only be achieved by looking at the historical perspectives rather than mere theoretical evaluation. They attempted to rationalize the clearly identified silos proposed by Sheth et al. (1988). While this looks intuitively appealing, there is not much merit in the logic proposed. The inclusion of the Historical school of Thought by Shaw and Jones (2005), we believe, has limited importance in the changed scenario. There is a definite need, we believe, for evaluating theory as well as the history that helped to create this theory. Hence, we went by the classification proposed by Sheth et al. (1988), but have given a call to marketing academicians and practitioners about the need to redefine marketing as an integrative discipline rather than merely go by the water-tight silos. Papers by authors after the year 2005 clearly indicate the momentum in that direction.
In recent years, there has been a distinct historical turn, with some of the most prominent scholars in our field encouraging a greater degree of historical reflection, using it to inform theory, conceptual development and pedagogy (e.g., Dholakia, 2012a, 2012b; Hunt, 2010; Petkus, 2010; Witkowski, 1989). According to these authors, one should be deeply sympathetic to the idea that history adds context and richness to our self-understanding as a community of scholars and practitioners (Fullerton, 2011). It helps us avoid reinventing the wheel (Tadajewski & Saren, 2008). History also helps frame and legitimize the contributions to marketing knowledge that we make (Hollander, 1985). And, to cap it all, it ensures that we provide appropriate gestures to our intellectual predecessors. These observations are pointers to the need for revisiting the earlier paradigms, to appreciate why there was a need to evaluate their contributions as well as shortcomings (Tadajewski & Jones, 2014)
It is clear from the above that combining the wisdom provided by earlier schools of thought makes us wiser and helps frame and legitimize the contributions. But hanging on to these paradigms, especially by practitioners of marketing, can be a major cause for disconnect. Unless schools of thought synchronize with times and get reflected in theory, the true cause is lost. Marketing borrows heavily from practice. Of late, it is visible that rapid changes are taking place in the way buyers and sellers transact, how businesses are innovating to reduce inventories and relying on vendor-managed supply chains, Ethical Marketing, Responsible Marketing, ROI-based marketing, Product Management, Brand equity, etc., are gaining traction. There is a demand for greater accountability on the part of marketers, and this is not restricted to the Finance Manager seeking responses to budgetary spending. With the scope and boundaries getting blurred, the clarion call for an integrative framework will get louder. A need for redefining marketing is clearly felt. These changes need to find reflection in empirical research (Kumar, 2015).
Most schools also happen to discuss the historical terrain and the different subsets (schools) and tend to give a broad side-view of marketing. This article begins with a quick review of the past thoughts but goes on to highlight a simple but overlooked fact in marketing, that is, the pace at which knowledge creation and dissemination are progressing. Papers in the recent past highlight the importance of moving beyond the historical school of thought and realize that many new dimensions are emerging.
The subsequent sections are arranged as follows. First, the 12 schools of thought are lucidly described, followed by a general discussion on the inadequacy of these schools and the need to look at the big picture in terms of the boundaries of marketing. This is followed by reflections on how the gap between theory and practice can be plugged with the active collaboration of practitioners and academics.
Research Methodology
As observed by the authors, writing a conceptual paper has its own set of challenges. The main reason behind this challenge may be the exploratory nature of the themes and the absence of concrete empirical support. Especially, in the case of the present article, wherein the objective was to streamline the various schools of thought, the authors faced hardship in aligning the overlapping manuscripts in a particular school. The present article got help from the classification dimensions suggested by Sheth et al. (1988). Further, the present article followed the writing approach suggested by previous studies (such as Hulland, 2020; Jakkola, 2020; Rana et al., 2020a, 2020b). Hence, the present article is based on the descriptive review of the literature and its integration through the dimensions suggested by Sheth et al. (1988). Specifically, the present article is the summary of the 12 schools of thought (namely, ‘commodity’, ‘functional’, ‘regional’, ‘institutional’, ‘functionalist’, ‘managerial’, ‘buyer behaviour’, ‘activist’, ‘macro marketing’, ‘organizational dynamics’, ‘systems’ and ‘social exchange’) in the marketing discipline since its inception in the early 1900s. These 12 schools of thought have been categorized based on the four quadrants on the two dimensions, namely ‘Interactive/Non-interactive’ perspective and ‘Economic/Non-economic’ perspective. The present article followed the three-stage process. In the first stage, extant literature have been reviewed, resulting in the summarization of the seminal papers. In the second stage, using the dimensions suggested by Sheth et al. (1988), the studies were grouped in four quadrants. In the final stage, studies in each quadrant were re-grouped in the marketing schools of thought.
The Schools of Marketing Thought
The present article follows Sheth et al.’s (1988) categorization of the marketing thoughts to simplify the discussion. To denote the similarities and distinctions, 12 schools of marketing thoughts have been broadly classified under four categories based on two dimensions. The first dimension is the ‘Interactive vs. Non-interactive’ perspective, and the other is the ‘Economic vs. Non-economic’ perspective. The ‘Interactive vs. Non-interactive’ dimension shows the balance of power (interdependent relationship vs. dominance) between buyers and sellers in the marketplace. The second dimension ‘Economic vs. Non-economic’ perspective describes whether the marketing actions of the firm are driven by economic values or not. The ‘Non-interactive-Economic’ quadrant consists of ‘commodity’, ‘functional’ and ‘regional’ schools of thought. The quadrant of ‘Interactive-Economic’ consists of ‘institutional’, ‘functionalist’ and ‘managerial’ schools of thought. The ‘Non-interactive-Non-economic’ quadrant consists of ‘buyer behaviour’, ‘activist’ and ‘macro-marketing schools of thoughts. The last quadrant ‘Interactive-Non-economic’ consists of ‘organizational dynamics’, ‘systems’ and ‘social exchange’ schools of thought. These schools of thought are described in the following sections.
The Non-interactive-economic Schools
This section discusses all the three schools of thought (Commodity School, Functional School and Regional School) which come under the ‘Non-interactive-Economic’ quadrant. These schools of thought are based on economic concepts and have a very little touch of a social and psychological perspective. On the other hand, these are totally based on the marketers’ perspective than the interaction between buyers and sellers. The Non-interactive-economic schools consist of the commodity school, functional school and regional school. All these three schools have been discussed in the following sub-sections.
The Commodity School
The idea behind the commodity school is based on the argument that the marketing discipline is based on the movement of goods from the manufacturers to the consumers. Therefore, the scholars of this school focussed on the objects of the transaction (i.e., goods). All the theorists of this school tried to classify goods on the basis of various parameters. These theorists believed that the classifications of goods would not only help the academic community, it would also be helpful to the marketing practitioners. They further wanted to prove that the various categories of goods are homogeneous in terms of marketing procedures and techniques. Parlin (1912) was the first to classify the goods on the basis of the women’s purchase attitude. He classified the goods as ‘convenience goods’ (insignificant in value and needed for immediate use; bought at the most convenient place without a comparison), ‘emergency goods’ (some unexpected event made it for immediate use) and ‘shopping goods’ (needs sufficient thoughts; takes time in buying and comparison is a must). Copeland (1923) classified the goods as ‘convenience goods’, ‘shopping goods’ and ‘speciality goods’. This classification was based on the consumers’ needs, knowledge of need-satisfying alternatives and willingness to delay need-satisfaction. Another most prominent classification was done by Aspinwall (1958). His characteristics of goods theory classified goods in red, orange and yellow goods. Kaish (1967) divided goods on the basis of the theory of cognitive dissonance, such as pre-purchase anxiety. So overall, the commodity school of thoughts summarizes the various ways to classify goods. However, there was ambiguity about the parameters of goods classification.
The Functional School
While, the classification under the commodity school was based on the goods or the objects of exchange, the functional school was based on the activities needed to execute marketing transactions. This school started with the classification by Shaw (1912) on the basis of the role of the middlemen in distribution. The majority of the contributions under this school of thought came from Weld (1917). He proposed six activities (assembling, storing, risks assumption, rearrangement, selling and transportation) carried out by marketers. But Weld (1917) was criticized for assuming these activities as independent of each other. According to the critics, these functions are interdependent. Further, Ryan (1935) summarized all 52 marketing activities observed by previous studies in seven broad functions. Another most prominent theorist in this school was McGarry (1950), who reviewed the previous classification systems and proposed six functions, which became the base for further classification theories. Later, Lewis and Erickson (1969) divided marketing functions into two broad functions—to obtain demand and to service demand. Overall, the functional school of thought was focussed on the various activities marketers perform for marketing transactions. However, the relationship among various functions has been ignored.
The Regional School
The regional school is based on the belief that marketing is a form of economic activity designed to bridge the geographic gap between buyers and sellers. Compared to other schools of thought in the ‘Non-interactive-Economic’ quadrant, this school started late. Reilly (1931) proposed the law of retail gravitation, which talks about the relative attractiveness of two different cities’ shopping areas for the consumers living in between. Converse (1949) proposed the formula to determine the boundaries of a trading centre’s trade area. Further, Huff (1964) proposed the formula to predict the shopping patterns of the consumers. The regional school theorists have majorly described the importance of location in the case of retailing.
The Interactive-economic Schools
The interactive-economic school came into existence a decade after the non-interactive-economic school. Therefore, the marketing thoughts under this quadrant were more flexible. These schools have explained the marketing discipline as an interactive process among the producers, the channel partners and the consumers, which was opposite to non-interactive perspective assumptions. But on the other hand, the authors were agreeing with the earlier schools on the basis of economic principles. The interactive-economic schools consist of the institutional school, the functionalist school and the managerial school. These schools have been discussed in the following sub-sections.
The Institutional School
The institutional school is one of the most important schools of thought in marketing. It has given importance to the organizations involved in the marketing process, that is, the movement of goods from the producers to the consumers. It emerged around the 1920s and 1930s (Sheth et al., 1988). This school was focussed on the various issues about marketing channels. In the beginning, the concentration was on the middlemen (Butler, 1923; Weld, 1916). Most importantly, the authors analysed the channel structure design and suggested integration and shortening of the marketing channel for economic efficiency (Alderson, 1954; Converse & Huegy, 1940) and later on the basis of a more holistic approach (Balderston, 1964; McCammon, 1963, 1965). Consequently, theories regarding retailing and wholesaling were developed (Bartels, 1976). But some of the important questions remained unanswered under this school of thoughts, such as what can be the impact of product innovations, conflict and power issues among the channel partners on the distribution channel (Sheth et al., 1988)? What will be the impact of technological innovations and globalization on the distribution channels? How marketing channels would be refined to take care of environmental issues?
The Functionalist School
The functionalist school is complex; therefore, it is very difficult to understand its basic concepts. It emerged during the period of 1950–1960. The contributions under this school were largely based on the writings of a single person, according to Alderson (1945–1965). The main attention of this school was on the exchange process and the heterogeneity of supply and demand. Instead of applied economics, Alderson explained marketing from a systems perspective and included systems theory, organizational behaviour, anthropology, social psychology and, most importantly, cultural ecology in his theorizing (Lagrosen & Svensson, 2006). To describe the fundamental elements of this theory, he coined the term ‘organized behaviour systems’, which he defined as the entities operating in the marketing environment (Alderson, 1965). His major focus was on two organized behaviour systems; households (which accumulate goods to sustain their lives) and firms (which either produce or distribute products and services to survive and grow). Importantly, he had not considered marketing channel as an organized behaviour system (Sheth et al., 1988). This theory emphasized the match between the diverse requirements of buyers and the differentiated output of sellers, as heterogeneity is on both sides of the market—buyers and sellers. Assorting was the final step of the system to move to the households to satisfy their requirements; others like sorting out; allocating and accumulation were the activities from the sellers’ side for building the final assortment. He proposed the concept of ‘transvection’, which analysed both the efficiency and effectiveness of the process of matching demand and supply, and includes all the exchanges happening in the process (Alderson, 1965). Since this school is majorly based on the writings of Alderson only, therefore it did not enjoy scientific empirical support (Sheth et al., 1988).
The Managerial School
The managerial school was the one that got the maximum impact on the marketing discipline for decades. It was a practice and application-driven school of thought. It emerged between the 1940s and 1960s with the emergence of the marketing mix concept (Borden, 1964; McCarthy, 1960, 1964; McGarry, 1950). This school had given many concepts like consumer need-based production (Keith, 1960), marketing myopia (Levitt, 1960), market segmentation (Smith, 1956), etc. The marketing mix (4Ps) covers decisions regarding product, price, place (distribution) and promotion. Under marketing mix, this school had given some important concepts which were proposed and very well-acknowledged. A few of them are product life cycle (Levitt, 1965), skimming and penetration pricing (Dean, 1950), distributional decisions (Magee, 1960), the goal of advertising (Lavidge & Steiner, 1961), personal selling (Cash & Crissy, 1958), etc. During this complete period, the central concept of this school had been the utility of the theories for the marketing practitioners. The above-mentioned marketing concepts helped the practitioners to analyse the consumer needs; and further, the marketing mix helped them to integrate their functional tasks, therefore this school is very comprehensive. But too much practice orientation could provide a biased perspective on areas like consumerism and environmental side effects of marketing activities (Sheth et al., 1988). However, overall, this school is very popular and well-recognized.
The Non-interactive–Non-economic Schools
The non-interactive and non-economic schools of thought are comparatively new, as they started in the 1960s and 1970s. The scholars of this school realized that marketing actions cannot be defined on the economic principles alone, therefore the behavioural and social science factors were introduced. Simultaneously, they included consumers and society at large as the recipient of the marketing practices along with the producers or sellers. In other words, on one hand, they have taken psychological variables and, on the other, they have taken perspectives of both the seller and the buyer. The non-interactive and non-economic school can be assumed as the major breaking point in the history of marketing schools of thought, because of the shift it brought from macro- to micro-level, that is, from markets to individual customers (Lagrosen & Svenson, 2006). There are three schools under this quadrant—the buyer behaviour school, the activist school and the macro-marketing school. These schools have been discussed in the next sub-section.
The Buyer Behaviour School
The buyer behaviour school has attracted an enormous response from the authors and the researchers. It had not only focussed on the customers in the marketplace, but it had also explained the reasons behind their actions. The common denominator of the thoughts of this school’s scholars was the applications of behavioural or psychological principles to consumer behaviour. The scholars had borrowed theories from psychology, anthropology, mathematics and sociology to explain buyer behaviour. In the beginning, the scholars were concentrated on generating a grand theory of buyer behaviour, and the most well-known theory was proposed by Howard and Sheth (1969). Later, they were focussed to establish the constructs of buyer behaviour. Brand loyalty, attitudes, intentions, information processing are some of the constructs, the scholars of this school discovered. Some new avenues of research were also generated such as industrial buying behaviour, family buying behaviour, cross-cultural issues affecting buying behaviour, attitude–behaviour relationship, etc. The number of studies on the existing issues such as the influence of reference groups, word-of-mouth communication, household decision-making, cognitive dissonance theory, perceived risk in buying behaviour, etc., had increased. But, this school attracted some criticism. There was an enormous diversity of research and thoughts within this school as it had the largest amount of research and most of them are interdisciplinary (Sheth et al., 1988). It made this school more complicated and unaligned. It had an overemphasis on individual cognitive psychology, and the buying behaviour models had multiple attributes (Sheth, 1982).
The Activist School
The second school of thought under this quadrant is the activist school of thought. The focus was on the imbalance of power between buyers and sellers, and on the malpractices of marketing by individual firms in the marketplace. Several institutions and individuals were responsible to create and sustain the consumer movements, but the most influential among them was Ralph Nader. The foundation of consumer protection lies in the concepts of welfare economics propagated by great economists as Schumpeter, Keynes, Houthker and Modigliani. Both research and theory in this area were focussed on the malpractices of marketing in the marketplace. It includes areas of research like deceptive advertising, high-pressure sales tactics, product safety and disclosure of information. The research was revolved around the assumption that there was a need for governmental regulations and for the organizations dedicated to the protection of consumer behaviour to safeguard innocent and uninformed consumers. Consumer movement as a cause had given way to more systematic and fundamental research and thinking in this area. It was indicated by the research being done to develop the theory for consumer satisfaction and dissatisfaction (Andreasen, 1977; Hunt, 1977). Kotler (1972) has gone beyond and developed a grid to show the goods having immediate satisfaction and long-term consumer welfare. The research was also focussed on disadvantaged customers like the blacks, the Hispanics, the disabled, the poor and the other minority consumers. But this school of thought looked overlapped with both the buyer behaviour and macro-marketing schools. It overlapped with buyer behaviour school, as it always involved buyers and their needs. It overlapped with macro-marketing schools as it intended to deal with more macro-issues like government regulations, market structure, education, competition and ethics. It showed that this school might be absorbed by the other two schools in the future. Last, this school was unable to define marketing ethics and its social responsibility.
The Macro-marketing School
The macro-marketing school referred to the role and impact of the marketing activities and the institutions on the society and vice versa. The managerial school had identified the presence of some exogenous variables, and it treated them as uncontrollable within which marketing functions and practices must operate, but the macro-marketing school started focussing on controlling these exogenous variables. The origination of this school lied in the concern of the role of business in society. The scholars of this school examined the role of marketing from a societal perspective rather than the perspective of profit-oriented firms. This school had seen a number of scholars, but the contributions of two scholars are very important here. Holloway with the help of Hancock developed a collection of broad exogenous environmental variables of sociological, anthropological, psychological, economic, legal, ethical, competitive and technological forces (Holloway & Hancock, 1964). Another study is from Fisk (1967), who used the general systems perspective to the study of marketing. This school has evolved from the concentration on broad environmental issues to the focus on achieving national goals such as economic development, population control and redistribution of national income and wealth. Many societal issues like energy conservation, education, healthcare, etc., too were addressed (Kotler, 1975). But like activist school, its boundary was not defined. It was difficult to separate this school from business policy or from political economy. Another issue was the difficulty to get a consensus on the methods to solve social problems and concerns.
The Interactive–Non-economic Schools
The interactive–non-economic schools combine the complexity of interactivity and non-economic focus, which made them even more complicated. The interactive/non-economic schools have some common denominators, such as; they were based on behavioural and psychological areas of research rather than economic profit or principles. These were comparatively new sets of schools. These schools applied an interactive, integrated and mutual interdependence approach to transactions in the marketplace in which both the buyers and the sellers were seen as equally important. Three schools of thought which come under this quadrant are the organizational dynamics, the systems and the social exchange schools of thoughts. These schools of thought have been discussed in the next sub-section.
The Organizational Dynamics School
The organizational dynamics school and the institutional school both explained the complex activities of the distribution channels. But the institutional school is based on economic principles unlike the former which is based on behavioural and psychological principles, this way; it was different from the organizational dynamics school (Lagrosen & Svenson, 2006). It emerged in the 1960s and 1970s with the pioneering work of Ridgeway (1957) about the behavioural orientation of the channel partners (dealers). This school mainly talks about the conflict, control and cooperation among channel members. Conflict is mainly because of the balance of power (or change in dependency) between two-channel partners (Beier & Stern, 1969). This school also talked about the sources of power, utilization of power by the channel members, measurement of power, the relationship between power and conflict, conflict measurement, cooperation in an inter-organizational system and the effect of power on the bargaining system. This school had tried to overcome the flaws of institutional school, but it itself has some shortcomings. First, there was no standardized set of scales to measure the variables such as power and conflict. Second, it had more concepts and theories than empirical support. Third, this school was more process-oriented than outcome-oriented, which made it more complicated and difficult to implement (Sheth et al., 1988).
The Systems School
The major argument of the systems school was to see the organizations as an overall system instead of some of the parts of the system. This school had borrowed many aspects from sociology. It was consistent with the functionalist school, but it was still different as this school was based on behavioural principles unlike the functionalist school, which was based on economic principles. It too emerged during the 1960s and 1970s with the influence of the operations research techniques in the different disciplines of the business. This school revolved around the various aspects of the marketing system. The first author to use systems terminology in marketing was Alderson (1957). In the beginning, the general systems theory by various authors tried to define the ‘marketing system’ as the integrated or unified elements of marketing. Later, they tried to establish a relationship between the marketing system and the environment or society. The literature under this school can broadly be divided into two macroscopic analyses (focusses on the behaviour of the systems as a whole) and microscopic analysis (focusses on the minute structure of the subsystem). This school was close to the marketing theory, and the advent of new technologies and marketing information systems have made it more popular than any other school of thought. Therefore, the future of this school looked very bright, and it attracted a number of research works. There were many important contributions from the researchers and the authors under both categories. However, the scholars of this school were divided over the definition of ‘marketing systems’ and on the various elements of marketing. Like the organizational dynamics school, it too was difficult to implement because of the significant involvement of the top management (Sheth et al., 1988).
The Social Exchange School
Finally, the social exchange school, which had raised controversy by claiming that the marketing theory is applicable to all social transactions and not just to the economic transactions. They also argued that the exchange should be the basis for a generic theory of marketing. Both of these arguments had been challenged by scholars with a more traditional view of the marketing subject. It emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. This school focussed on the parties to an exchange, the motivation of the parties to reach to an agreement and the context of the exchange. Most marketing theorists had argued that the exchange is the crux of marketing. The pioneer contributions under this area were ‘Law of Exchange’ (Alderson & Miles, 1965) and ‘Generic concept of Marketing’ (Kotler, 1972). Later, the exchange school was bifurcated into two divergent paths: the traditional one focussing on marketing transactions (i.e., buying and selling) and the broadened path based on generic or social exchange (i.e., generalized giving and receiving). Bagozzi’s (1979) work was a prominent one and was an attempt to formalize a generic theory of exchange. He conceptualized three dependent variables: outcomes, experiences and actions; and four determinants: social influence, social actor characteristics, social contingencies and third-party effects. Following the conceptualization, Bagozzi (1979) formalized his theory with a series of structural equations. Though this school tried to broaden the marketing horizon, in the process, there may be the possibility to lose the real identity (Luck, 1969). However, this school was not only rich in literature but also extremely opposite to the other two schools under this quadrant (Sheth et al., 1988).
General Discussion
Since Bartels’ (1962) classic summary of marketing thoughts, Sheth et al. (1988) were the first authors, who not only summarized but evaluated the schools of thought too. However, Bartels (1965) merely provided an account of the development of the marketing theory in terms of the period of discovery (1900–1910), conceptualization (1910–1920), integration (1920–1930), development (1930–1940), re-appraisal (1940–1950) and finally re-conceptualization (1950–1960). A look at the marketing thoughts of the first-half of the twentieth century shows that two fundamental axioms seemed to dominate most of the thinking, despite the divergence of thoughts. The first axiom shows that marketing is essentially an economic activity and is a subset of economics. Therefore, the discussion about marketing schools like ‘Commodity’, ‘Functional’, ‘Regional’, ‘Institutional’, ‘Functionalist’ and ‘Managerial’ was restricted to the economic behaviour of people and institutions. The second axiom of consensus was the belief that the initiator of the marketing activities is the marketer, not the consumers in the marketplace. Although the understanding of consumer behaviour was supposed to be a desirable one, it was just an input to the design of marketing programmes and activities that the marketer could influence, manipulate and control market behaviour with greater effectiveness (Sheth & Gardner, 1982). The genesis of six marketing schools of thought in the second-half of the twentieth century, especially after the 1960s, comes from questioning these two fundamental axioms of marketing. These recent schools of thought started focussing on non-economic perspectives of marketing activities. The credit for this radical shift in the thought process must be given to Kuhn (1962).
But even the evolution of these non-economic schools could not reduce the debate over some age-old issues, such as the status of marketing as science or arts, the dominant perspective of marketing theories, the relationship of marketing with society and the general theory of marketing. So far, the status of marketing as science or arts is concerned; the debate continues among scholars. The debate revolves around the methodology of empirical research and theory development. Some scholars led by Shelby Hunt (1983) advocated logical positivism as the meta-theoretical criteria for theory development, while some scholars led by Anderson (1983) proposed relativistic criteria as the theory development. As marketing is supposed to be a socially constructed enterprise, humanistic philosophies are also said to be one criterion by scholars such as Hirschman (1986). Most scholars agree to the fact that the constructs and concepts should come from the marketing discipline itself to make the meta-theoretical criteria of theory development stronger. The buyer behaviour school and the managerial school of thoughts are attracting most of the empirical research, and they have also provided their own marketing concepts and constructs.
Different schools of thought mentioned above have contributed in their own unique way. The commodity school focussed on the goods; the functional school on marketing activities; the institutional school focussed on the agents; the managerial school on the sellers; the buyer behaviour school on the consumers; the activist and the macro-marketing schools on the public interest, etc. Therefore, it is clearly visible that every school had its own dominant perspective with no particular emphasis. Hence, the marketing discipline should be seen in a much broader sense as exchange relationships. This exchange relationship should not be limited to the buyers and sellers but should go beyond. Marketing management techniques can be applied to political campaigns, religious organizations, social or personal causes without broadening the conceptual domain of marketing to contain political science, theology, sociology and social psychology. But the question arises; can this widening of horizon go on forever? Or should the marketing theories return to the institution’s boundary? The main problem is the loss of identity, vagueness of subject matter and lack of disciplinary boundaries (Shaw & Jones, 2005). The marketing concepts should be dynamic and incorporate the important changes in the practices. An example of dynamism can be relationship marketing, which, for example, focusses on the continued relationship rather than just exchange.
Apart from two schools of thought (the activist school and the Macro-marketing school), not a single school of thought focussed on the relationship between society and the marketing discipline. Both are inter-dependent and both try to influence each other. Society makes the rule for the marketing discipline so that it does not harm the public interest and the marketers with the help of 4Ps try to influence society. More than trust, it is the authority from the social side and the profit from the marketers’ side, which governs their relationship. This concept of advocacy must be replaced by the concept of partnership between society and marketing.
Kumar (2015) Journal of Marketing is of the view that the marketing discipline has to reaffirm its position in providing new knowledge and thought that will have a long-lasting impact on academicians and practitioners. In his article, Kumar (2015) summarized how marketing discipline evolved from 1936 to1945 onwards from ‘Marketing as Applied Economics’, from 1946 to1955, ‘Marketing as Managerial activity’, from 1956 to 65, ‘Marketing as quantitative science’ and so on till the advent of the century. Notable to mention at this point is the period 1996–2004, where the dominant metaphor was ‘Marketing as a scarce resource’ 2005–2012—Marketing as an Investment and 2013 onwards—Marketing as an integral part of the organization. These realities need to find a definitive place in boardrooms, as well as emerging paradigms and theories of marketing.
Finally, we concur with recent opinions proposed by several authors that a general theory of marketing is required to answer a lot of questions that the earlier schools of thought have only raised, leading to greater controversies. These discussions have only led to criticism of existing theory, but surprisingly have not suggested any solutions to managerial dilemmas. The ultimate goal for studying marketing thoughts is the construction of a general theory of marketing. There are several reasons why marketing scholars can make a general theory of marketing on the basis of the concepts proposed in these 12 schools of thought that were identified by Sheth et al. (1988). The construction of a general theory would unambiguously answer the question: ‘Is marketing a science’? It would also create unity out of the fragmentation of marketing thoughts, and a general theory would resolve the identity crises by delimiting marketing’s boundary dispute. Clearly not a mainstream focus of marketing scholarship, a number of leading thinkers have nevertheless persevered in the ongoing quest for a general theory (Shaw, 2009).
Managerial Implications
Since attaining recognition as a separate field of study early in the twentieth century, marketing as a discipline has developed an impressive body of literature and undergone a substantial shift in its quest to become a cohesive body of knowledge. According to Webster’s Online Dictionary, a discipline is ‘a subject that is taught; a field of study; training that corrects, molds…a rule or system of rules governing conduct or activity’. Marketing has its subject and its field, and has produced its professional rules. It also has its accumulated knowledge. The dilemma is that the very structuring of that body of knowledge is limiting, restricting, static, demarcating and value-laden. The more technical and academic marketing-as-content becomes, the less useful, relevant and adaptable it is becoming for the practitioners. Practitioners, it appears, are neither able to read the academic marketing journals nor have been able to forge links with the business school community (Hill & McGinnis, 2007). The authors such as Hansen et al. (1988) and Wierenga (2002) have focussed on this issue of bridging the gap between the marketing theories and the marketing practices. Wierenga (2002) talked about the gap between ‘Marketing Knowledge possessed by the Academic (MKA)’ and the ‘Marketing Knowledge possessed by the Practitioners (MKP)’. While Hansen et al. (1988) proposed one expert system which can use complex knowledge and rules for problem-solving. This ‘Expert System’ is on one hand knowledge-based and on the other hand based on intuition, experience, beliefs and incomplete facts. These kinds of efforts are the need of hours so that we can provide the theory and methodology for tackling marketing problems and to improve marketing decision-making. But this is just the proposed prototype of the model; the main difficulty will be faced in the development of this model. Further, its efficiency and profitable use are yet to get examined. The traditional problem behind this effort is the identification of real-world problems. Therefore, the first step towards plugging the gap between the marketing theories and the practices should be finding the relevant research problems. The findings of the research, guided with the real-world research problems, will eventually help the practitioners.
Conclusion
Marketing as a discipline is undergoing rapid change independent of the geography in which it operates. Marketers, as discussed (Kumar, 2015) must realize that resources are scarce and the accountability for budgets has increased. Managers have to focus on the emerging issues such as integration of business processes and shareholder value creation (Srivastava et al., 1999), long-life customers and profitability (Reinartz & Kumar, 2000), the measurement of customer lifetime value in non-contractual settings (Reinartz & Kumar, 2003), customer portfolio management (Johnson & Selnes, 2004), to name a few.
Integration of business knowledge with theory calls for a joint effort by academia and industry in seeking out answers to questions that dominate board room discussions. Shorter product life cycles and continuous redefining of value to suit customer’s tastes and preferences have created greater challenges for corporations. There is an urgent need to bridge the gap between knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination, where marketing practitioners collaborate with the academic community, bring in their diverse understanding and share it with prospective readers and peers. This will go a long way in the real-time improvisation of knowledge.
To conclude, we believe that this article contributes to a managerial and theoretical understanding of the history of marketing thought as highlighted by Sheth et al. (1988) but goes on to suggest the need for a greater integrative approach as well as the need for quicker adaptation to knowledge creation and dissemination.
Limitations and Future Research Directions
This article draws extensively from the work of Sheth et al. (1988) and makes an attempt to demystify the complex theories proposed in the 12 schools of marketing thought. Given the scope of the article (proposing a ready-reckoner for marketing practitioners, attempting to bridge the gap between theory and practice as well as discuss more emphatically a need for a dominant and unified theory of marketing), it cannot capture all the complexities involved in theory building. We propose that future work can be carried out in this area. As proposed by Kumar (2015), the future of marketing thought and practice should encompass the existing practices of marketing, give importance to new developments in society and mesh them with the scholarly work in marketing, thereby leading to new thinking in marketing. Future research in this realm should give due credit to emerging thoughts about the role of marketing and its actual impact on a corporation’s profitability, and suggest a more direct and responsible role for marketing.
On its part, the academic community has already started researching issues relating to the nature and scope of social media, the importance of user-generated information, the profitability of coupon campaigns to businesses, use of viral marketing for marketing utilitarian products (page 5, LHS para 3) Kumar (2015), to name a few. The need of the hour is to bring industry and academia onto one common platform.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.