Download A Statement of Marketing Philosophy

A Statement of
Marketing Philosophy
MARKETING STAFF OF
THE OHIO STATE J ^
UNIVERSITY
This s+a+emenf Is a summary of the basic ideas or
convictions about marketing
which are shared by the
marketing faculty of The
Ohio State University.
It was formulated by them
in order to provide the faculty with a formally stated
sense of purpose . . . a
means of unifying individual
efforts . . . a tool for achieving consistency . . . a guideline for maintaining charted
courses... a basis for evaluating marketing educational
and research programs . . .
a prerequisite to the develODment of a formally stated
philosophy of m a r k e t i n g
education . . . and a statement to clarify their views
to the academic and business community.
Journal of Marketing, Vol. 29 (January,
1965), pp. 43-44.
to a philosophy of marketing is one's concept of the
B ASIC
nature of marketing itself. We have felt it imperative to
reexamine and clarify our concept of the nature and purpose of
marketing in order to determine whether our views were adequate
to advance our goals as marketing educators. These goals involve
striving for higher levels of sophistication in marketing knowledge and facilitating socially useful and self-fulfilling careers for
marketing students. Plans for the attainment of such goals are
clearly related to the nature of marketing itself.
Certainly there is no lack of divergent viewpoints concerning
the nature of marketing. It has been described by one person
or another as a business activity; as a group of related business
activities; as a trade phenomenon; as a frame of mind; as a
coordinative, integrative function in policy making; as a sense
of business purpose; as an economic process; as a structure of
institutions; as the process of exchanging or transferring ownership of products; as a process of concentration, equalization, and
dispersion; as the creation of time, place, and possession utilities;
as a process of demand and supply adjustment; and as many
other things. Each of the foregoing concepts may be appropriate
for a given person, at a given time, when examining marketing
problems from a given point of view. We have felt it necessary
to conceive of marketing in a manner sufficiently comprehensive
to encompass other viewpoints which may be narrow or more
specialized. Accordingly, we have formulated a definition of marketing as follows:
Marketing is the process in a society by which the demand
structure for economic goods and services is anticipated or
enlarged and satisfied through the conception, promotion,
exchange, and physical distribution of such goods and services.
When so viewed as a composite process, marketing is clearly
a subject of much broader scope than the compilation of functions or managed activities commonly identified as marketing
responsibilities in individual companies. It includes the continuous
inter-action of original producers, middlemen, facilitating agencies, governments, and consumers. As such, marketing possesses
a dynamic quality and a sense of purpose.
For some purposes, marketing may appropriately be defined
as an area of management responsibility within the business firm,
or as a technology by means of which action in the marketing
process is planned, organized, and controlled. We hold, however,
that such views are partial and can properly be understood and
evaluated only with reference to the broader process of which
they are a part.
43
44
Marketing can also be conceived as an area of
knowledge involving both scientific and disciplinarystudy and research. As a subject, its scope may be
broadly coextensive with our definition of marketing as a social process or, for more restrictive
purposes, equated to its technological or managerial
aspects.
Convictions About Marketing
Some of our most basic ideas or convictions about
marketing are summarized as follows:
1. Whether marketing is more of a science or
more of an art is debatable, but it is certainly
an area in which considerable scientific progress is being made, both in the sense of the
expansion of a body of classified and systematized knowledge and also with respect
to increasing application of scientific methods
to basic research and in decision making
processes within firms.
2. Marketing is both a formative infiuence and
an adaptive aspect of our culture. It is adaptive in the sense that business firms in the
marketing process must be responsive to the
changing wants and circumstances of dynamic markets if they are to survive and
grow. Marketing is also a formative influence
in our culture in the sense that the aggregate
impact of product offerings, marketing communications and institutions contribute to
the formulation of attitudes or values.
3. Significant contributions have been made to
marketing knowledge by such fields as economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology,
cultural ecology, demography, political science, and history. Scholars and technicians
from such disciplines, contributing new concepts, vie\vpoints, and methods to the study
and practice of marketing, have made notable
contributions to marketing thought. At the
same time, marketing has had a significant
impact upon the content and methods of
cognate disciplines.
4. With expected continuing increases in population, productive capacity and living standards, marketing will become increasingly significant, by developing better means of
enlarging and servicing markets, thereby enabling our economy to produce more and
better goods and services. The ends served
by the marketing process are, hopefully, the
more complete satisfaction of human, business, and public wants, and at the same time
provision for the highest attainable degrees
of utilization of our technological and human
resources.
Journal of Marketing, January, 1965
5. Marketing is an integral part of our whole
productive process, in the sense that it adds
values to goods and services through the creation of time, place, possession, and information utilities. A positive approach to marketing as a part of our productive process calls
for changes in certain common concepts, such
as the meaning of product, production, and
productiveness of the labor force and other
factors of production.
6. Taking a broad view of marketing as a social
process does not preclude functional specialization nor does it diminish the importance of
managerial competence in marketing divisions
of business firms. On the other hand, such a
broad view gives to managerial marketing a
sense of purpose, clearly calling for high degrees of efficiency in functional responsibilities
and for the utilization of the most advanced
problem-solving methods so that the firm may
deliver to customers what they most want in
the best manner.
7- Because the scope of marketing is broader
than marketing management per se, there is
much need for:
a. An understanding of the entire marketing
system, its historical development, and the
forces within it that spell its dynamics,
which may be useful for purposes of making appropriate choices and decisions, recognizing its contribution to the social
order, or developing the knowledge and
perspective.
b. An understanding of the environment
within which the marketing process is
being performed as illuminated by other
social disciplines.
c. Duly considering all points of view, with
emphasis on consumer or social welfare,
on the maximization or optimization of
profit or efficiency in individual enterprises,
and on relationships between social and
acquisitive efficiency.
• A80UT THE AUTHORS. This article is the result of the composite efforts of the following full-time marketing faculty of the
Ohio State University: Robert Bar+els, Theodore N. Becltman,
W, Arthur Cullman, William R. Davidson, James H. Davis, Alton
F. Doody, James F. Enge!, Jimmie L Heskett, Rate A. Howell.
Robert B. Miner, William M. Morgenroth, Louis W. Stern, and
James C. Yocum.
The material reproduced here was originally published as a
pamphlet by the Bureau of Business Research in cooperation with
the Department of Business Organization, College of Oommerce
and Administration, The Ohio State University.