Sources and Status of Marketing Theory

Few would deny that marketing occupies a central position in the business environment of the late twentieth century and is becoming increasingly pervasive in non-business contexts. There is ample evidence, after all, that a marketing orientation is the key to long-term business success.1,2 Innumerable surveys of senior management attest to its continuing importance.3,4 The marketing concept is being enthusiastically embraced in fields as diverse as health care, public administration and the not-for-profit sector.5,6,7 It is rapidly colonising the erstwhile command economies of eastern Europe, where the market is supplanting marxism as the societal touchstone, albeit not without privation.8,9 And, as the proliferation of publications, professorships, degree programmes and professional societies clearly testifies, marketing is in the ascendant as an academic discipline.