Changing Role of Marketing in Contemporary Issues

THE CHANGING ROLE OF MARKETING IN THE CORPORATION
Frederick E. Webster, Jr.

For the past two decades, some subtle changes in the concept and practice of marketing have been fundamentally reshaping the field. Many of these changes have been initiated by industry, in the form of new organizational types, without explicit concern for their underlying theoretical explanation or justification. On the academic side, prophetic voices have been speaking (Arndt 1979, 1981, 1983; Thorelli 1986; Van de Ven 1976; Williamson 1975) but seldom heard because, representing several different disciplines, they did not sing as a singing group. More basically, perhaps, few listeners were ready to hear the message or to do the intellectual work necessary to pull the several themes together. Like the Peruvian Indians who thought the sails of the Spanish invaders on the horizon were some phenomenon of the weather and did nothing to prepare themselves for attack (Handy 1990), marketers may ignore some important information in their environment simply because it is not consistent with their past experience.

The purpose of this article is to outline both the intellectual and the pragmatic roots of changes that are occurring in marketing, especially marketing management, as a body of knowledge, theory, and practice and to suggest the need for a new paradigm of the marketing function within the firm. First, the origins of the marketing management framework, the generally accepted paradigm of the marketing discipline for the past three decades, are considered. Then shifting managerial practice is examined, especially the dissolution of hierarchical bureaucratic structures in favor of networks of buyer-seller relationships and strategic alliances. Within those new forms of organization, the changing role of marketing is discussed and a reconceptualization of marketing as a field of study and practice is outlined.

Marketing as a Social and Economic Process

It is sobering to recall

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