Marketing Theories Series #1

An idea came to my mind... since I must read a lot of books and theories as part of my studies, I was thinking, why not I summarize what I read as part of this blog... it could be a part of my revision, plus I could share what I learned with other students who are attempting to understand these theories.

So, I will start with a series of short summary from a book I am currently reading by Sheth, Gardner and Garrett entitled 'Marketing Theory - Evolution and Evalution. This is a great book. I dislike theories, but I like this book. It is logically structured, concise, simple to read, and easy to understand.

I would strongly recommend students pursuing marketing theory or marketing history to read this book as a start, and then you can move on to read other books like Michael Baker and Hunt.


Summary #1

What Is, or Should Be, the Dominant Perspective of Marketing?

Consumer Behaviour
·         During 1960s and 1970s, consumer behavior had been the dominant perspective (Pg3)
·         Beginning with early scholars such as Katona (1953) and Howard (1963a), the marketing discipline moved rapidly to push consumer behavior to the forefront of academic discussion and research. – Pg 3
·         Several notable concepts generated: Perceived risk (Bauer 1960), Information processing (Bettman 1979), reference group influence (Bourne 1965), social class (Martineau 1958), involvement (Krugman 1965), psychographics (Wells 1975), attitudes (Hansen 1972) and situational influences (Belk 1974) – Pg 3
·         Sheth (1979b, p. 426) ‘’…. So far, it seems that we have discovered only two obvious laws of consumer behavior: those who don’t need the product, consume it and those who need it, do not consume it!’’ – Pg 4

Strategic Marketing

·         Growing importance in 1980s in response to criticisms that marketing has failed to consider adequately the development of long term competitive advantage (Wind and Robertson 1983) – Pg 4
·         Hofer and Schendel 1978, p.11, ‘’Strategy is the match between an organization’s resources and skills and the environmental opportunities and risks it faces and the purposes it wishes to accomplish’’ – Pg 4
·         Kerin and Peterson 1983, p4, ‘’… strategic management is a manner of thinking that integrates broadly defined strategic and operating viewpoints and decisions for the purpose of directing resources toward opportunities consistent with enterprise capabilities to achieve a sustainable differential advantage.’’ – Pg 4
·         Anderson (1982, p 24) focus on dual perspectives of strategic marketing and consumer behavior called ‘Constituency-based perspective’. ‘’Marketing role in strategic planning reduces to three major activities. – Pg 4

1.      Identify the optimal long term position/ positions that will assure customer satisfaction and support

2.      Development of strategies designed to capture its preferred positions by gaining a competitive advantage over firms pursuing similar positioning strategies.

3.      Negotiate with top management and other functional areas to implement its strategies.

·         Day and Wensley (1983, p. 83), ‘’… we foresee a growing consensus around the notion that the marketing function initiates, negotiates and manages acceptable exchange relationships with key interest groups, or constituencies, in the pursuit of sustainable competitive advantages, within specific markets, on the basis of long run consumer and channel franchises.’’ – Pg 5

CONCLUSION:

Day 1984, Bagozzi 1986 - During the transition, there is an emergence of view point that marketing should be built on two key pillars, i.e.:
·         A good understanding of the consumer’s needs and behavior
·         A critical analysis of opportunities for competitive advantage