Marketing has shown the aptitude to re-examine its focus, techniques and goals as the surrounding society changes and new problems require attention. Marketing evolved through a commodity focus, an institutional focus, a functional focus, a managerial focus and a social focus. Each new focus had its advocates and critics. Marketing emerged each time with a refreshed and expanded self-concept.
There are three stages of marketing consciousness:
1. Consciousness one- it is a conception that marketing is essentially a business subject. It maintains that marketing is concerned with sellers, buyers and economic products and services. Its core concept is that of market transactions.
2. Consciousness two- it emphasizes that marketers do not see payment as a necessary condition to define the domain of marketing phenomena. It replaces the core concept of market transactions with a broader one of organization-client transactions.
3. Consciousness three- it states that marketing applies to an organization’s attempts to relate to all of its publics, not just its consuming public. It defines marketing in terms of function rather than in terms of structure.
This broader concept of marketing is termed as generic marketing.
Axioms of marketing: the author describes marketing as a category of human action distinguishable from other categories of human action such as voting, loving, consuming or fighting. Marketing being a category of human action is governed by following 4 axioms (each supported by certain corollaries):
1. Marketing involves two or more social units, each consisting of one or more human actors.
2. At least one of the social units is seeking a specific response from one or more other units concerning some social object.
3. The market’s response probability is not fixed.
4. Marketing is the attempt to produce the desired response by creating and offering values to the market.
Typologies of Marketing:
1. Target market