Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Houston
The Marketin8 Concept is so ubiquitous in the marketing classroom that the naive student of marketing
is generally led to belleve that finns who fail to employ this philosophy are business criminals.
Iolson (1978. p. RI)
Is is not time to discard the marketing concept'?
Sachs and Benson (1978. p. 74)
Journal of Marketing
Vol. 50 (April 19861. 81-87.
The Definition of
.,.
The Origin of
...
The "Why" o f .
..
Knowing the customer and satisfying him/her has become the shibboleth of the marketing community since
Keith's time, yet the marketing concept has not been
subjected to formal scrutiny. What follows is an attempt to assess the conditions under which the marketing concept offers the proper guidance to the marketer and the conditions under which the marketer
should not follow its prescription.
In acommercial venture, the ultimate goal is some
form of profit achievement, whether that be described
as profit maximization or the attainment of some satisfactory profitability (cf. Ackoff 1970). Similarly, a
nonprofit group will have a goal or set of goals which
defines the organization's reason for e x i ~ t i n g . ~
'One bit of evidence as to the article's significance is that it appears
in two separate collections purponing to contain seminal works in
marketing: Classics in Morkering (Walten and Robin 1978) and Morkering Classics (Enis and Cox 1981).
'The following discussion describes the marketer-to-be or one who
represents an organization. Clearly. the entity could be a single penon
as well.
Alternatives to
...
Keith (1960) describes the production and sales concepts as inferior and antecedent to the marketing con-
cept. Where the marketing concept directs the organization to design its marketing mix-including
product-only after the needs and wants of current
and potential exchange partners have been assessed,
the sales and the production concepts describe the organization that makes an offering available without
having tailored it as a result of this information. The
sales concept describes an organization which aggressively studies and seeks out exchange partners for
already established offerings, where the production
concept is passive with regard to marketing. The production concept was illustrated by the Bell Telephone
System prior to its court-imposed restructuring, or the
artist who derives his/her satisfaction from the creation of a unique product that meets some internally
held standard. That same artist would be relying on
the sales concept if he/she sought information about
potential buyers and used that information in an attempt to engage in an exchange.
Figure I restates the distinction between the marketing, sales, and production concepts. It shows the
buyer side of a marketing exchange, pointing out that
buyers can also gather information about current and
potential exchange partners. tailoring offerings as suit
the needs and wants of those exchange partners. Likewise, the buyer may elect not to negotiate on what
he/she is seeking or offering in exchange, though aggressively pursuing the exchange through the other ingredients of the marketing mix. This is shown in the
Figure as the Buying Concept, since it is the buyer's
form of the sales concept. In the same vein, some
buyers are quite passive in their buying behavior, accepting or rejecting that which has been made available but not choosing to actively seek an exchange.
This is shown as the Offering Concept, since it is the
buyer's form of the production concept.
In summary, it is important to recognize that under some circumstances, the production concept or the
sales concept would be a more appropriate management philosophy for the organization than the marketing concept. Fluthermore. exchange consists of both
buyers and sellers, and as noted many years ago, buyers are marketers too (Kotler and Levy 1973). Buyers
FIGURE 1
Defining Alternative Concepts
Available t o t h e Marketer
Behavior
A Statement of
...
Misconstruing
...
Unfortunately, many marketers have taken the marketing concept to mean that marketers should take their
lead from the expressed needs and wants of customers. As a result, wben the limitations of doing so
are recognized, the marketing concept is criticized,
when it would be more appropriate to criticize the way
in which the concept is implemented.
. . . the marketing concept is an inadequate prescription for marketing strategy. because it virtually
ignores a vital input of marketing strategy-the creative abilities of the fum (Kaldor 1971. p. 19).
'While this may seem obvious, some argue that $ofits (or implicitly. satisfaction of the marketing entity's own objstive function) should
be a consequence of satisfying the market's needs (cf. Bell and Emory
1971). and not pm of the allocation process in which the fmdecides
to what extent it will satisfy the demand of the marker.
...
1979, p . 761. This anicle makes imponant points about the need to
rely oo the unique capabilities of the organizalion, which may be nonmarketing capabilities. This lheme is also present in the arlirles by
Kaldor (1971), Kerby (19721. and Tauber (1974).
philosophy should be something other than the marketing concept. The examples given merely scratch
the surface and are designed to illustrate general conditions, rather than to demonstrate the degree to which
such conditions exist around us. Probably the list is
REFERENCES
Ackoff, Russell L. (1970). A Concept of Corporate Planning,
New York: Wiley.
Baeozzi. Richard P. (19751. "Marketine as Exchanee." Jour;a1 qf Marketing, '39 (dctober). 32-39.
Bell. Martin L. and C. W. Emorv (1971). 'The Faltering Marketing Concept." Journal of k r k e r i n g . 35 (~ctobe;).3742.
Bennett, R. C. and R. G. Cooper (1979). "Beyond the Marketing Concept." Business Horizons. 22 (June). 76-83.
(1981). "The Misuse of Marketing: An American
Tragedy." Business Horaons, 24 (November-December).
51-61.
Borden, Neil H. (1964). "The Concept of the Marketing Mix."
Journal of Advert~rinaResearch. 4 (June). 2-7.
D~xon.~onilldF. (1978i. *The Poverty of Social Markerlng:
MSL' Buvmers Tapir!. ?h (Sumrncr). 50-50
Enis. B. M. and K. K. Cox, eds. (198l), Marketing Classics.
4th ed., Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Felton, A. P. (1959), "Making the Marketing Concept Work,"
Harvard Business Review, 37 (July/August). 55-65.
Hinchman. Elizabeth C. (1983), 'Aesthetics, Ideologies. and
the'limits of the Marketing Concept," Journal of Marketing, 47 (Summer). 45-55.
Houston, Franklin S. and Richard E. Homans (1977). "Public
Agency Marketing: Pitfalls and Problems." M S U Business
Topics. 25 (Summer), 36-40.
Jolson. M. A. (1978). Morkering Management, New York:
Macmillan.
Kaldor, A. G. (1971). 'Imbricative Marketing," Journal of
Marketing, 35 (April), 19-25.
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