Contemporary Issues in Marketing

Principles and Practice

Ayantunji Gbadamosi

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781526485403
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

As the landscape of marketing knowledge changes, contemporary buyers, be it individuals or organisations are now more informed, more demanding and crave value co-creation with marketers. This, coupled with technological and socio-cultural changes, provides robust evidence that the old perspectives, assumptions, and practices of marketing are no longer satisfactory.

Contemporary Issues in Marketing is a comprehensive, up-to-date, and cutting edge resource that presents a coherent understanding of topical issues in marketing. Bringing together theory and practitioners' perspectives, it firmly addresses the prevailing challenges in the marketing world. Using vignettes on topics such as technology, ethics and practitioner viewpoints, this bookexplores the paradigm shift in marketing and developments in thoughts throughout the discipline.

Part I Introducing Contemporary Marketing

• Chapter 1 Marketing: The Paradigm Shift
• Chapter 2 Contemporary Global Marketing
• Chapter 3 Contemporary Marketing Research
• Chapter 4 Neuromarketing

1 Marketing: The Paradigm Shift

Ayantunji Gbadamosi

Learning Objectives

At the end of this chapter, you should be able to understand and discuss:

• The meaning of marketing and how this has changed over the years
• Historical perspectives on marketing and various marketing orientations
• Customer value as the anchor of contemporary marketing and the notion of value co-creation in marketing
• Transactional and relationship marketing and their significance for contemporary marketing
• The notion of customer loyalty and internal marketing
• Demarketing and its relevance in contemporary marketing

Introduction

From all indications, marketing is not a new phenomenon. However, just as we humans experience change, grow and have new associations, it has undergone considerable changes over the years. This could be explained and justified in a number of ways. For example, we can simply examine these changes from the elements associated with it, such as consumer needs, wants, the nature of exchange, markets, market offerings and those other things that form part of the building blocks that define it. It is now crystal clear that the interaction between these concepts in the way marketing is being defined is in a state of flux. This is the case irrespective of the lens through which marketing is perceived, be it as an academic discipline, a practice or business philosophy. In view of this, this chapter sets the scene for others in this book by conceptually tracing the historical issues in marketing and linking it to the notions of value creation, value delivery and value co-creation; and discusses how these are linked to contemporary perspectives on the issues. The chapter takes us through areas of convergence among these views but also explores the tensions that persist among the contributions. The issue of relationship marketing (RM), customer loyalty, internal marketing, and demarketing are discussed in this chapter in such a way that anchors the fundamental discussion of the paradigm shift in marketing principles. The chapter also links this discourse to the emerging discussions on fundamental postulations of marketing-mix elements and the associated variants.

What is Marketing? Examining the Perspectives

It is likely that readers of this book will ask the question: Why is the meaning of marketing required in a book on contemporary issues in marketing? The idea is that, for us to know how the landscape of marketing has changed over the years, it is important to know exactly what the term is and whether the way it is being defined has changed with the way it is being practised. Meanwhile, it is interesting to know that there are various misconceptions about the term marketing. The discrepancy in the way the term is defined or explained is due to a number of reasons. Essentially, these revolve around how people have practised the profession or seen others use it in the past. Some simply call it public relations (PR), market research, advertising, branding, and many other things based on their knowledge of how marketing is used. While these are relevant to marketing in one form or another, it would be very limiting to restrict the meaning to each of these in that marketing covers more in terms of scope and significance. Meanwhile, as noted by Brodie et al. (1997), one of the very popular definitions of marketing among academics is that provided by the American Marketing Association (AMA) in 1985, which states that ‘marketing involves the integrated analysis, planning, and control of the “marketing mix” variables (product, price, promotion, and distribution) to create exchange and satisfy both individual and organisational objectives’ (AMA, 2013).

This definition highlights some useful points that are noteworthy. We can infer from this perspective that marketing involves the notion of exchange; it is a process and considers the traditional marketing mix as salient. It also recognises the need for businesses to satisfy the objectives of organisations and individuals. However, it is short of perfect and has attracted criticism on many grounds, as argued by authors such as Gummesson (1987) and Grönroos (1989). Overall, these criticisms could be summarised into the fact that the focus of the definition is not contemporary enough and does not adequately cover the emerging issues in the marketing of today. Meanwhile, a more recent definition approved by the Board of Directors of the American Marketing Association has fine-tuned this old definition and added a number of new elements. It presents marketing as ‘the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large’ (July 2013).

If examined closely, we can see that this definition extends our understanding of what marketing stands for by emphasising the notion of value. To put this discussion in the right perspective, it will be useful to define the term value, which stands as a dominant element in contemporary marketing. As noted by Solomon et al. (2013), value can be defined as the perceived benefits minus the perceived costs in relation to money, time or emotion. This is a very useful definition in the sense that it indicates that the value of a transaction is not necessarily in money alone. Imagine you urgently need a bottle of water just before your class and this is available in a vending machine just at the entrance of the class for 30 pence more than you could get it from a supermarket. Considering the time and the emotional input involved, the value of getting it just at the entrance of the room will probably be higher than going all the way to the supermarket to get the same product at a relatively cheaper price. So, we can see that the definition of value may not be as straightforward as it seems. To reiterate this point, an exploratory study by Zeithaml (1988: 13) revealed that respondents who were customers defined value in four different ways:

1. Value is low price.
2. Value is whatever I want in a product.
3. Value is the quality I get for the price I pay.
4. Value is what I get for what I give.

Given the differences in what consumers perceive as value, Zeithaml (1988) suggests that perceived value could simply be defined as the consumer’s overall assessment of the utility of a product based on perceptions of what is received and what is given.

Meanwhile, the notion of value varies in the way it relates to these various stakeholders. Some of the key stakeholders are:

• customers
• channel members
• suppliers
• producers
• society
• shareholders.

By and large, as shown in this latter definition of marketing, the focus of contemporary marketing is about value creation and delivery and involves various parties and institutions towards fulfilment of the marketing functions. This perspective has been reflected in some of the most recent definitions noted in the marketing literature, as indicated in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1

We can sketch out the elements associated with contemporary marketing in one form or another, as shown in Figure 1.1.

As Figure 1.1 shows, marketing has the customer at the centre of the system. Essentially, a marketing system is about satisfying consumers’ needs through exchange. These needs refer to the discrepancy that occurs between the current state and the desired state of the consumer, but human wants are desires for specific market offerings to satisfy these needs. Since consumption is closely linked to the available resources, demand plays a pivotal role in this contemporary marketing system in that it is about consumers’ wants being coupled with purchasing power. Ultimately, an effectively managed system will not only yield profit to the organisations but also create value...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Acknowledgements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Editor and Contributors
• Part I Introducing Contemporary Marketing
• 1 Marketing: The Paradigm Shift
• 2 Contemporary Global Marketing
• 3 Contemporary Marketing Research
• 4 Neuromarketing
• Part II Exploring Meanings in Contemporary Consumption
• 5 The Contemporary Consumer
• 6 Brands, Branding and Brand Culture
• 7 Marketing Ethics, Green and Sustainable Marketing
• Part III Technology, Business and Contemporary Marketing
• 8 Digital and Social Media Marketing
• 9 Entrepreneurial and SME Marketing
• 10 Business-to-Business (B2B) Marketing
• Part IV Marketing Non-Conventional Market Offerings
• 11 Social and Non-Profit Marketing
• 12 Nation Branding and Place Marketing An Amalgamation of Theory and Practice
• 13 Arts Marketing
• 14 Religion and Consumer Behaviour
• Glossary
• Index