Marketing as a Social & Economic Process

It is sobering to recall that the study of marketing did not always have a managerial focus. The early roots of marketing as an area of academic study can be found, beginning around 1910, in Midwestern American land grant universities, where a strong involvement with the farm sector created a concern for agricultural markets and the processes by which products were brought to market and prices determined. The analysis was centered around commodities and the institutions involved in moving them from farm, forest, sea, mine, and factory to industrial processors, users, and consumers. Within this tradition, three separate schools evolved that focused on the commodities themselves, on the marketing institutions through which products were brought to market, especially brokers, wholesalers, and retailers in their many forms and variations (Breyer 1934; Duddy and Revzan 1953), and finally on the functions performed by these institutions (McGarry 1950; Weld 1917). All of these approaches tended to be descriptive rather than normative, with the functional being the most analytical and leading to the development of a conceptual framework for the marketing discipline (Barters 1962; Rathmell 1965).

These early approaches to the study of marketing are interesting because of the relative absence of a managerial orientation. Marketing was seen as a set of social and economic processes rather than as a set of managerial activities and responsibilities. The institutional and functional emphasis began to change in 1948, when the American Marketing Association (1948, p. 210) defined marketing as:

The performance of business activities directed toward, and incident to, the flow of goods and services from producer to consumer or user.

This definition, modified only very slightly in 1960, represented an important shift of emphasis. Though it grew out of the functional view, it defined marketing functions as business activities rather than as social or economic processes. The managerial approach brought relevance and realism to the study of marketing, with an emphasis on problem solving, planning, implementation, and control in a competitive marketplace.