مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد نظریه سیستم های بازاریابی به عنوان کالای عمومی – Sage 2018

Marketing Systems Theory and the Collective Drive for Change

Marketing systems theory rests on the foundational idea that marketing represents a provisioning technology of society that can be reflexive as it can often bring change to society through its ability to influence dimensions of society, such as the economic, political, sociocultural, and technological dimensions of society (Fisk 1967, 1974; Fisk 1997; Kadirov and Varey 2011; Layton 2007, 2009, 2015; Mittelstaedt, Kilbourne, and Mittelstaedt 2006). Fisk understood marketing as a social process that must be seen (i.e. interpreted) from the perspective of stakeholders who experience spillover effects, in the form of both public “goods” and “bads.” He further indicated that his reading of classic marketing thinkers (e.g. Alderson, Breyer, Cox) led him to believe that effective marketing systems meet human needs efficiently and flexibly while maximizing positive externalities. Although Fisk (1997) did not specifically discuss how marketing systems emerge and evolve, he emphasized the need of disenfranchised market actors—disenfranchised market actors influence technologies that ensure outcomes such as distributive justice, collective advance, improved quality of life, and long-run community flourishing. Since then, marketing systems theory has focused largely on the demand for goods/services assortments (Layton 2007) and questions regarding whether market actors “think” like macromarketers, and whether they comprehend systemic issues, whether they desire institutional change in society beyond markets. Macromarketing research indicates that marketing systems arise as a solution to the problem of “demand heterogeneity” (Layton 2009; Mittelstaedt, Kilbourne, and Mittelstaedt 2006). Demand heterogeneity arises due to formal, informal, and philosophical antecedents (Mittelstaedt, Kilbourne, and Mittelstaedt 2006) as well as evolving market-mechanisms (Layton 2015). Somewhat counter to this, Fisk (1997) suggested that the demand at a micro-level was endogenously shaped and determined within marketing system structures. The current article puts these seemingly different logics together in an attempt to answer the following question: where does the drive for change, which goes beyond the immediate context of micro-level exchanges, fit in this framework? Recent evidence in macromarketing research attests to the desire for wellfunctioning, dignity-enhancing, just marketing systems, specifically among disenfranchised groups (Jagadale, Kadirov, and Chakraborty 2017; Laczniak and Santos 2011; Vulkan, Roth, and Neeman 2013). Collective “dissatisfaction” with marketing systems is rooted in systemic issues and reflected in “wicked” problems (Kennedy 2017). Market injustice, when it occurs, is clearly reflected in the experiences of marketing system participants (Klein 2008; Vulkan, Roth, and Neeman 2013). Consumers might accept solutions proffered by marketing system assortments that are offered at a micro level while they still seek desired macro-changes as observed in the example of American gun-violence-prevention groups (Huff et al. 2017). Continued attempts to “fix” problematic markets are undertaken when participants, despite transacting in these markets, end up feeling that the whole process was chaotic, inefficient and unfair (Roth 2008, 2013). The drive for change becomes salient when actors’ selfinterests align and intersect. The perspective of markets as the agora stresses this aspect of marketing systems that goes beyond exchange markets, which include political, sociocultural, technological, and institutional influences (Mittelstaedt, Kilbourne, and Mittelstaedt 2006). The agora perspective considers possibilities that some exchange practices of a group of market actors may impact the potential of demand satisfaction for other groups.