RETAILING PAPER

Retailing paper

Retailing paper

Introduction

Over recent years some re-thinking and re-appraisal of what marketing constitutes has emerged in the literature. Whilst few have appeared, some commentaries that question the efficacy of modern marketing thought - that is, from its presumed inception in the early 1950s - are available. In 1975, Crosier demonstrated the variability of interpretation of the word “marketing” itself, indicating not only changes of the meaning of the term over time, but varying applications of the term by thinkers in the same period. In 1981, Bennett and Cooper argued that the marketing concept itself was already outdated. A year later, when Laufer and Paradeise (1982) wrote of their misgivings about the traditional function and worth of a key aspect of the marketing discipline - market research - they openly questioned one of the basic tenets of the marketing philosophy:

Case Study Scenario and Criteria

In this report I as a graduate in marketing have recently been employed by a company that specialises in e-retailing consultancy. Your first assignment is to evaluate the feasibility of developing an expanded internet shopping capability for a timber based garden feature/building company. Their current website “shop” offers a limited range of specialised/exclusive garden buildings. From now on, we will not say that things are as they are, but [rather] that they are very similar to what they may seem to be.

Implicit in such observations is an open invitation to the marketing community to refer back to its presumption of a solid and thriving epistemological base for the advancement of its cause. The challenge, in the main, has not been taken up, and marketing and its tenets remain relatively immune to challenge. Given that these words appeared over 15 years ago, it is something of a testimony to this immunity to challenge - and change - that little has surfaced in text, paper or article to more closely examine their view. The structure, breadth and depth of the marketing domain nevertheless largely remains based on the aggregated textual works (McCarthy et al.,1998; McColl-Kennedy et al., 1994; Kotler et al., 1994; Kotler, 1997; Stanton et al., 1993; Zikmund and d'Amico, 1996; Assael et al.,1995). These may be seen to be representative of the meta-narratives of the field (Enright, 1997a).

Still, ponderings over the efficacy of the whole modern marketing construct continue to emerge. Soderland (1990) argues for new approaches to business intelligence for an era when “post-modern phenomena must be approached by post-modern methods” (p. 10). On a much wider philosophical front, but involving a direct attack on business management schools, Saul (1992) deplores what he sees as the arrogance of élites, especially for the way in which they have employed a claimed scientific rationalism at the expense of common sense. Saul's denouncements perhaps go too far in conferring maliciousness on business, and, presumably amongst them, marketing elites. However, they do highlight the dualities that exist when a group seeks professional status through the kind of value-free discourse that science is perceived to ...