Fundamentals_of_Marketing

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MARKETING: DEVELOPMENT AND SCOPE
Much effort was expended on building a product classification which in a revised form is
still used today and is reflected in the division between convenience, shopping and speciality
goods. The idea is that consumers behave in different ways when purchasing convenience
products, relatively inexpensive and frequently purchased goods, compared with shopping
products, e.g. consumer durables such as stereos, bicycles and furniture. Speciality products
possess a single unique characteristic which buyers are willing to expend a considerable
amount of effort to obtain, e.g. a Cartier watch. In our text this work is integrated into the
section on Product, one of the ‘4 Ps’ of marketing. You should also be able to detect its
influence in the discussion of consumer involvement in Chapter 3.
Another group of academics focused on what marketers do. This research yielded up
a classification of marketing activities, e.g. in assembling goods and storing them, assuming
risk, rearranging commodities by sorting, grading and breaking up large quantities into
smaller units, selling and transporting. This work is integrated into the discussion of place
or distribution (Chapter 11), which is another of the ‘4 Ps’.
In the 1930s researchers turned to explore another kind of problem; the spatial
separation between producer and consumer – especially the distances consumers might be
prepared to travel and the role played by distance in consumer decision to patronize one
store rather than another. This work is integrated into the marketing links with logistics,
physical distribution and retail location, again as part of the ‘place’ element of the ‘4 Ps’.
Functionalism
The functionalist approach was a major development in marketing and is the approach which
has been used for the design of this book. The functionalist approach differs from the
functional approach mentioned earlier in that it develops a systems approach to marketing,
whereby behaviour is considered to be systemic and goal-driven. The functionalist approach
derives in large part from the theories of the biologist Charles Darwin. Within this view
the goal of marketing is to effectively match firms’ supply with household demand.
Functionalism is important because it views firms and households as organisms which must
find some point of equilibrium (homeostasis) in relation to each other and the environment
on which they both depend. This ecological view forms the basis of several approaches to
the study of marketing, including the managerialist approach, which considers those activities
which are best suited to ensuring the successful adaptation of the firm to its environment:
macro-marketing, which focuses on the macro environmental impact of marketing, and green
marketing, which seeks to bring the activities of firms into a new and more harmonious
relation with the environment.
A MANAGERIAL APPROACH
This book takes a traditional managerial orientation to the study of marketing. This began
at Harvard University in the US in the late nineteenth century but did not really become
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