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JHRM
3,2

Marketing: is management
all that there is?
Roger A. Layton

194

School of Marketing, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Abstract
Purpose Dixon recently commented that 50 years ago marketing management and planning was
part of marketing theory, today it seems to be all there is. There is now a growing fragmentation of
marketing thought, and a lack of marketing relevance to critical social and economic questions, that is of
increasing concern to both internal and external critics. The purpose of this paper is to explore briefly the
evolution of marketing thought over the last 100 years and to suggest a better response to the critics.
Design/methodology/approach The paper comprises an historical review of the development of
marketing as a discipline that could lead to a reconceptualization of the field.
Findings Adam Smith emphasised both scale and diversity in markets. However, it was the
economics of scale that caught the attention of economists and then of marketing specialists.
This incomplete view of Smith limited the scope of marketing thought to single or related products.
However, Smiths emphasis on diversity leads, logically and inevitably, to the development of the
concept of a marketing system. A set of propositions are then suggested that lead to a generalised theory
of marketing based on the marketing system concept.
Originality/value This approach holds promise of resolving the concerns of both the internal and
external critics of marketing, opening the door to a fresh, relevant interpretation of marketing thought
that might address the concerns expressed by Dixon.
Keywords Marketing systems, Marketing theory, Marketing management
Paper type Conceptual paper

In a Wharton Alumni Magazine article, the chairman of the marketing department states
This is a department that focuses on translating state-of-the art, cutting-edge research into
decision tools that managers can use to make better decisions [. . .] Fifty years ago one would
want to consider what is meant by better decisions, and how better might be measured. But
then marketing management and planning was a part of marketing theory; today it seems to be
all that there is (Dixon, 2010).

Journal of Historical Research in

Marketing
Vol. 3 No. 2, 2011
pp. 194-213
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1755-750X
DOI 10.1108/17557501111132145

Introduction
For some time now, marketing has been in the headlines, and for reasons that could
better have been avoided. The expectations, over 70 years ago, when Paul Mazur and
Malcolm McNair suggested that the role of marketing was to create and deliver a
standard of living; or just 50 years ago, when Drucker (1958, p. 252) argued that
marketing [. . .] is the process through which economy is integrated into society to serve
human needs, have for the most part not been fulfilled. Instead, marketing is often
portrayed as a driver of unwanted social and cultural change. Consequently, the critics
argue inter alia that marketing contributes to the destruction of long-standing cultural
values and traditions, to consumption excesses leading amongst other ills to climate
change, and in a more immediate context to problems such as the growing trend towards
obesity and the recent global financial crisis, a crisis caused by the selling of
inappropriate financial products to uninformed buyers.

Discontent with marketing is not limited to social critics. For many years, the
integrating theme of marketing as a business activity concerned with creating,
communicating and delivering value to customers has underpinned rapid growth in the
discipline of marketing. This emphasis is now seen to be leading to growing
fragmentation in both research and in everyday practice. These trends can be seen in the
growth of specialized sub-fields such as relationship marketing, quality management,
service marketing, supply and value chain management, and the management of
innovation. The same trends can also be seen in the drift of some traditional areas of
interest such as macro/policy issues to specialized sub-groups and the study of strategy
to the emergent field of strategic management. As Wilkie and Moore (2006, p. 226) note,
virtually every research area is now a stream running its own course and that there is
coming to be no real mainstream of academic marketing thought any longer.
To lend more urgency to the matter, in July 2009, the Journal of Marketing had a Guest
Editorial written by three leading academics (Reibstein et al., 2009, p. 1) that was titled
Is marketing academia losing its way? They noted that:
[. . .] marketing academics have little to say about critical strategic marketing issues and
emerging issues, such as the impact of networked organizations, the impact and marketing of
emerging technologies, [. . .], unethical marketing practices, [. . .] the role of marketing when
customers are empowered.

Their answer was to urge for greater relevance, and to suggest the need to
fundamentally rethink marketing education. These concerns are real and important but
the answer is not to be found in a rethinking of marketing education it lies in a
rethinking of the limits to marketing.
What went wrong? An answer to this question can be found by going back nearly
100 years to when the discipline of marketing as it is today had its origins. Retracing the
steps that led to the present makes somewhat clearer the reasons why marketing finds
itself in its present position. A more rewarding answer can be found by going back again,
this time for some 250 years, and revisiting the intellectual origins of marketing as a
discipline. Hidden way back there is a largely forgotten idea which when fully developed
could lead to a fresh approach to marketing, both as a social science and as a management
discipline. Rethinking the foundations of marketing in this way will build on the strengths
of contemporary marketing. At the same time, it will expand our understanding to the
point where discipline-based answers can be provided to the many challenges that lie
ahead challenges where marketing insights now are conspicuously absent.
Revisiting the past a look back over 100 years
Going back some 100 years or so brings us to the time when marketing gradually
emerged as a specific area of study in college and university education, primarily in
America, but also in other industrializing nations in Europe and Asia. This was a period
in America when a major transformation of the economy was under way the Western
states were rapidly developing, railroads and canals linked them with markets in the
Eastern states, the telegraph opened new horizons in communication, and the boom and
busts of the 1890s were but a recent memory. The economic and cultural climate of the
times supported education in a new field, one which came to be called marketing.
The courses taught at the time were largely concerned with distribution, appropriate
regulation of the distributive industries, commercial credit, and then a little later with

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the principles of advertising, salesmanship, wholesaling, and retailing. (Bartels, 1962).

These scattered commercial subjects were then brought together and taught as part of
the new field of marketing. In the 1920s, marketing had moved on, then being seen as the
formal study of transactions involving commodities and manufactured products, with a
focus on:
.
the specific requirements of differing commodities;
.
the institutions needed to make effective distribution possible; and
.
on the functions that had to be performed by these institutions if exchange were
to occur.
In the 1950s, in response to the far reaching economic and social changes taking place
following the end of Second World War, marketing thinking shifted significantly,
focussing on the management of marketing within the business firm, and emphasising
the central role of the customer in shaping the nature of the offer made by such firms. The
shift in thinking was strikingly reflected in Dixons contrast of doctoral seminars at
Wharton in 1955-1956 and 1957-1958 (2010). The earlier seminar focussed on a debate as
to whether marketing was art or science and considered the possibilities of theory and
science in marketing; although still concerned with insights from the social sciences, the
later seminar was dominated by a recent book by Alderson (1957, p. 353), Marketing
Behavior and Executive Action, where, as Alderson put it, The culmination of marketing
theory is in demonstrating its value as perspective for marketing practice. While in the
first seminar marketing came to be viewed in terms of systems, including firms,
marketing channels, national and international economies, all of which interacted with a
variety of social institutions (Dixon, 2010), in the second, as Alderson (1957, p. 23) put it,
marketing was only a vantage point from which to understand business policy.
A little later in the early 1960s the managerial focus in marketing became widely
accepted. The idea of an offer, defined in terms of the 4 Ps taxonomy, made by a firm to a
target market, was suggested by McCarthy (1960), and a little later, by Kotler (1967).
Not surprisingly, this reorientation led to rapid, far reaching change in both managerial
and professional practice, and in academic research and teaching.
It was not long before questions were being asked about both what was included, and
what excluded, in this reorientation of marketing. Was marketing best thought of simply
as a business technology, addressing normative issues of concern to decision makers, or
did it have a significant positive role as a social science focussed on transactions? Were
non-business organizations such as the churches, charities, and government
instrumentalities included? Should marketing performance be judged simply on
corporate returns or should attention also be paid to the societal impacts of marketing
choices? Could the logic of marketing be applied to the challenges of social marketing
such as public health campaigns and army recruiting? Did marketing have something to
say about all transactions or just those which involved the voluntary exchange of
economic value?
In parallel, with these and similar questions, concerns were also being raised about
the predominantly micro orientation of marketing thought. As Layton and Grossbart
(2006, p. 195) note, looking back to the 1970s:
[. . .] in the USA there was a growing concern as to the impacts of business decisions on society
and the environment. Protest was again in the air, driven by the Nader inspired concerns with

product safety and corporate power, by deep seated worries about human rights, by the
environmental messages inspired by Rachel Carsons work, by Vietnam, and by the many
other forces economic, social and technological that were transforming America.
Micro-marketing and its impacts were a driving force in many of these changes and challenges.

In an attempt to bring order to the range of options under debate, Hunt (1977) suggested
that the study of marketing could be classified into eight cells created by the interaction
of the three dichotomies positive or normative, micro or macro, and profit or
non-profit. Although Hunts proposed taxonomy gained widespread support, it did little
to inhibit the growing fragmentation of the discipline. By far, the majority of published
research studies fell into the micro cells of the taxonomy matrix and, perhaps inevitably,
significant sub-disciplines began to emerge. Kotler and Levy (1969, p. 10) broadened the
application of marketing management to include the marketing of organizations,
persons and ideas thereby reaching out to non-profit and social marketing contexts.
The need to separate service marketing from product marketing was highlighted by
Shostack (1977); a recognition of the importance of the service encounter contributed to
the growth of relationship marketing; consumer and, more generally, customer research
emerged as a major field of study Communication studies, especially those concerned
with advertising decisions, took on increasing importance and research into
sub-disciplines such as the study of distribution channels, product development,
pricing, and many other aspects of marketing decisions grew rapidly, generating new
specialised journals and conferences.
Towards the end of the 1990s, symptoms began to emerge of a discontent with this
state of affairs. Change was yet again in the air. Schwartz (2003) pointed to the
demographics of aging Western societies and to the flood of children in the developing
world, to the breakthroughs in science and technology that might underpin a long
economic boom, to the uncertainties of ethnic and other disorders, to the shifts in global
economic and political power, to the challenges of a sustainable environment. Day and
Montgomery (1999) noted the impacts that wide-ranging trends such as these were likely
to have on industries, markets, firms, managers, and customers. In the midst of all this
change, marketing seemed to have lost its way. Simplistic frameworks such as the 4 Ps
seemed largely irrelevant in providing the logical foundations needed for relevance in an
increasingly complex and connected world. The important questions seemed to deal
with issues that did not fit easily into the fragmented or specialised fields now
characterising marketing, this leaving gaps that invited scholars from nearby
disciplines to explore. Faced with growing intellectual competition, marketing scholars,
teachers, and practitioners were struggling to distinguish marketing from other fields
and functional areas (Day and Montgomery, 1999, p. 3), a struggle raising awkward
questions as to just what was the unique contribution made by marketing as a discipline
and what did it contribute to short and/or long-term corporate profitability.
In their introduction to a book of essays entitled Does Marketing Need Reform,
Sheth and Sisodia (2006, p. 3) suggest that it has been evident for many years that
marketing as usual is simply not working anymore and that fundamentally new
thinking is needed. They went on to note that power in the marketplace economic,
informational, and psychological has shifted to consumers. (p. 4). In a concluding
chapter, they point out that the world has changed a great deal in the past two decades
but marketers have adapted to it in only superficial ways. After noting the challenges to
conventional wisdom arising from forces such as the rapid rise of emerging economies

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such as China and India, their access to cutting edge information tools, and the
maturing of the major Western markets, they go on to conclude marketers have to
change a great deal to adjust to this new world order (p. 332).
By 2010, rapidly changing circumstances had once again confronted marketing
scholars with the need to rethink the logical structure and boundaries to the discipline,
and to recreate an underlying consensus or worldview shared by scholars and
practitioners that could provide common ground for the development of marketing both
as a managerial discipline and as a social science, informing managers and guiding
policy in an increasingly complex, dynamic and uncertain world.
A fresh start scale and diversity in marketing thought
Going back in history a little further, to a period in the late eighteenth century, one finds
the English philosopher, Adam Smith, exploring the impacts of impending
industrialization on society at that time. His insights into the origin of wealth
re-invigorated economics and this in turn led to the development of managerial
marketing as we know it today. These developments however built on only part of the
story that Adam Smith wanted to tell and it is in this missing half that can be found the
basis for an expanded future for marketing.
His starting point was the observation that:
The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labor, and the greater part of the skill,
dexterity and judgement with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the
effects of the division of labor (Smith, 1776, Vol. 1, p. 2).

He saw clearly that specialization was the key to wealth, greatly increasing the
productivity of the workforce, thereby lowering costs and creating tradeable surplus.
The benefits from specialization, however, and in particular the usefulness of the surplus
thus created, required people to be willing to truck, barter and exchange in order to
satisfy their needs for a diversity of goods and services. It was also true that the division
of labor was limited by the extent of the market. The larger the market, the greater the
potential benefits of specialization. Smith (1776, Vol. 2, p. 95) goes on to point out that it is
free and open competition, the rivalship of competitors who are all endeavouring to
jostle one another out of employment, that leads prices to gravitate to a natural price for
every commodity. This process is one where each individual is led by an invisible hand
to promote an end which was no part of his intention (Smith, 1776, Vol. 3, p. 117).
It was his ideas on the allocation or distribution of wealth through the operation of the
invisible hand that attracted most interest. Who gets what is determined by the
interaction of supply and demand in a market for a specific product, with price emerging
as a competitive equilibrium is reached. Market participants were assumed to be fully
informed, equally endowed with necessary resources, equally adept in reaching
appropriate decisions.
When marketing was beginning to find its academic feet 100 years ago, these ideas had
an immediate appeal. The markets for commodities or products that were occupying the
minds of economists were the markets with which this new discipline was concerned. While
marketing was focussed on the practicalities of managing in these increasingly complex
markets, microeconomics was pushing back the boundaries, exploring analytically the
consequences of relaxing key assumptions. From this starting point, both marketing and
microeconomics shared a common interest in the concept of a market or in other words

a product or closely related group of products, regarding which it made sense to think of
sellers and buyers interacting to generate price and quality outcomes satisfying customer
needs. As marketing matured into a management science, this led to a sophisticated
understanding both of the decision processes open to managers and to customers, and of
the market settings in which they were active. It was central to theories of competition and
of resource advantage, and it underpinned the concept of industry.
While all this made sense, it missed the other half of the point that Adam Smith was
making. With specialisation comes an increasing diversity of the goods and services that
are traded. The challenges faced today in rethinking the nature and role of marketing for
the next 100 years can find an answer in the ideas that flow from a reconstruction of this
missing half.
That missing half is to be found in a study of the diversity seen everywhere in
contemporary markets. As Stuart Kauffman (2000, p. 212) noted, it is:
[. . .] one of the most striking facts about current economic theory is that it has no account of
this persistent secular explosion of diversity of goods, services and ways of making a living.

This time the starting point is the proposition that if producers chose to specialize, then
they must buy from someone else the goods and services they no longer have time to
make or perform. As the division of labour and specialization begin to spread in a
community, more and more goods and services have to be traded. Producers in their role
as consumers seek to acquire a mix of goods and services that matches their needs, filling
the gaps left as they move from self-sufficiency to specialization. Consumers in their role
as producers will seek to put together product/service combinations that can be traded
for the things they need. As producers, they will build on distinctive capabilities to
provide goods or services that capture competitive advantage, thus responding to the
opportunities created by a diversity of consumer needs. Both producers and consumers
will exist in a world of less than full information, of heterogeneous preferences, and of
substantial differences in both endowed and acquired capabilities. Arguably, both scale
and diversity are inseparable consequences of trade and thus inseparable elements in
reaching a full understanding of marketing.
The logic of diversity
What then happens as the number and extent of traded goods and services begins to
increase? Self-interest will lead producer/traders to increase specialized production in
order to reap the benefits of scale. In much the same way, self-interest will lead the same
producer/traders to look for ways of reducing transaction costs, of becoming better
informed as to what is on offer, and of identifying unmet customer needs that could
provide opportunities for growth and profit, perhaps exploiting possible economies of
scope. As trade increases both in volume and diversity, patterns emerge in the trade
relationships between sellers and buyers. These patterns are called marketing systems
and they are a direct consequence of the diversity of products being exchanged, and of
the variety of skills, capabilities, and preferences found amongst sellers and buyers.
Recently, marketing systems are to be found everywhere from primitive tribal
societies to advanced Western economies. They can take many forms, from simple barter
within and between small groups, to the trading networks linking Asia and Western
Europe over a millennium ago, to the complex networks of small and large enterprise
linked in the creation and delivery of the goods, services, experiences, and ideas that

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underpin contemporary society. They range from a single act of exchange involving a
seller and buyer, to complex interactions involving multiple sellers, many buyers and an
ever widening range of traded objects. They include value chains and service systems,
peasant markets and shopping malls, artisans and business ecosystems, networks for
private gain and for social benefit. In each case, acts of voluntary economic exchange
define the core of a marketing system. While each of these examples and those like them
can be studied from many points of view, it is the voluntary economic exchange of single or
multiple goods, services, experiences, and ideas that is central to the concept of a
marketing system.
Diversity in trade, then, is what leads directly to the concept of a marketing system. It
is in a deeper understanding of the functions, structure and evolution of marketing
systems that will be found the ideas and insights needed to complement the distinctive
contributions of managerial marketing.
It is obvious that marketing systems differ widely in both scale and diversity. But are
there some commonalities that could be used in thinking about a theory of marketing
systems? One approach is to watch what happens as trade patterns develop in a wide
range of human communities. When doing so, it is possible to draw on social disciplines
like anthropology and history; to look to geography or sociology for other insights; and
to economics for an understanding of the underlying incentives.
Drawing on these disciplines, four broad patterns in marketing systems can be
identified. The first, and perhaps the simplest and earliest, is called autarchic. This type
of system is found in many developing communities where individuals or households
are largely self-sufficient, often poorly informed, and it includes barter, sharing or
reciprocity within and between households within a community. While the obvious
examples of autarchy are to be found among foraging or subsistence societies, it is also
possible that disaster, whether due to earthquake, tsunami, war, or disease, may reduce a
more sophisticated marketing system to something close to autarchy.
Over time, as producers, traders, and buyers interact in the pursuit of their
self-interest, the autarchic market pattern drifts towards a more structured form, at
which point a marketing system becomes emergent. Informal understandings between
sellers and buyers deepen and take shape forming a social contract that allows trade to
take place between buyers and sellers who may not even know each other. An acceptable
medium of exchange is identified and measurements standardized, all this leading to
coherent price structures. With the formalization of these basic elements, repetitive
trading links are established and transitory marketplaces become fixed with increasing
trade volumes. Hawkers, street vendors, and other mobile traders grow in importance
and regional markets emerge. Trade within and between communities grows and the
range of goods and services available and on offer both widens and deepens.
An important phase is initiated when groups of traders form into firms, associations
or networks to reduce costs and exploit increasing returns. When product differentiation
and local brands take root, specialist markets develop and specialist roles such as those
associated with retailing, wholesaling, brokers or agents, information sources, and
enforcement emerge. Where and when some or all of these patterns can be identified, the
marketing system can be called emergent.
With the development of firms, associations or networks, and the growing acquisition
of power and influence within these systems, emergent marketing systems begin a
transition to structured or purposeful systems. Structured marketing systems typically

comprise many corporate entities, each of which in isolation could itself be considered a
purposeful or a structured system. These may range in size from small to very large, and
include single firms, as well as alliances or networks of firms cooperating in production,
distribution, or innovation. Structured marketing systems include shopping malls,
agricultural or industrial cooperatives, regional clusters, stock exchanges, and global
trade relationships.
In a purposeful marketing system, the distinguishing characteristic is the use of
economic or political power to direct flows of transactions in ways that contribute to the
goals of the entity exercising power. Most vertically integrated marketing systems fall
into this group. Somewhere between purposeful and structured marketing systems,
depending on the degree of centralized control, are business ecosystems, typically
comprising of a large number of loosely connected participants, often individually
purposeful, acting as a community, each relying for mutual effectiveness and survival
on other entities through a complex web of interdependencies. Examples of purposeful
marketing systems include WalMart, the major oil companies, Microsoft, and many
state-owned enterprises.
The structure, function, and evolution of each of these different marketing systems
are deeply influenced by two broad sets of factors. The first set of factors is institutional
in nature, generated both by the formal and informal rules, beliefs, and norms held by the
community within which the marketing system is located, and by the constraints and
opportunities created by geography, history, and physical infrastructure such as
distance or isolation. Rules, beliefs, and norms find expression in social structure and/or
hierarchy; in the powers, attitudes, and interests of rulers, government leaders,
politicians, and officials; in attitudes towards innovation and entrepreneurship; in the
existence of a common language and effective communication channels; in respect for
and access to property rights; and in the existence of a stable, efficient and (potentially)
fair social contract. Geography, history, and physical infrastructure are reflected in ease
of access by sea, river or land; in heterogeneous resource endowments; and in the
cumulative effects of past history. For the most part, factors such as these change slowly,
establishing the limits of the possible (Braudel, 1979) in the growth and operation of
marketing systems at all levels of aggregation. Although these are often thought of as
standing outside a marketing system, in the longer run, such institutional factors both
respond to and are shaped by the evolution of the marketing systems they impact.
A second set of factors that shape the development path taken by a marketing system
lie in the changing physical, informational, and social technologies open to system
participants. These may change swiftly or abruptly and have far reaching consequences,
consequences that include facilitating the evolution of new organizational forms,
widening and deepening assortments offered and sought, linking markets otherwise
separate, and changing perceptions of costs, time, and distance. As Mokyr (2002, p. 16)
points out, economies are limited in what they can do by their useful knowledge.
The dynamics of marketing system, growth, adaptation, and evolution in response to
these two sets of factors shown depicted in Figure 1.
This brief (and, admittedly, inadequate) overview suggests how a complementary
theoretical framework might be constructed, a framework for the study of marketing as a
social phenomena that is based on diversity as well as scale, and that goes some way
towards providing insights into the emergence and growth of increasingly complex
marketing systems. For both producers and consumers, the decision to trade involves

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much more than a single commodity. Consumers seek and acquire assortments that
match their needs, and producers will seek to put together product combinations that
build on accessing the distinctive competences needed to reap the benefits of
specialization through increasing returns. In this world view, technology and the growth
of knowledge, as well as the emergence of supporting institutions, play essential roles in
reducing or managing transaction and coordination costs, in facilitating the transactions
needed for the system to function and in generating innovative responses to new sets of
needs on the part of consumers as they become aware of the opportunities generated by
new knowledge.
Towards a theory of marketing systems
Marketing systems have their origin in the trade imperative, where individuals realise
that gains are possible through specialization. As specialization deepens, markets form,
more people become involved, and trade networks linking communities and introducing
cultural change and diversity develop. As these changes take place, marketing systems
emerge, grow, adapt, and evolve. They cooperate and compete, sometimes merging,
sometimes collapsing. They are dynamic, rarely in equilibrium. They are multilevel,
recursive in nature, with systems forming and reforming within systems, interacting
with systems at higher and lower levels of aggregation. They influence and are
influenced by the institutional and knowledge environments in which they are active.
They occupy the middle ground between individual buyer and seller decision processes
and outcomes, and the aggregate marketing system (Cox et al., 1965; Wilkie and Moore,
1999). The efficiency and effectiveness with which each individual marketing system
does what it does is a critical determinant of the quality of life in all societies.
The possibilities are shown in Figure 2.
It will be evident that this concept of a marketing system goes much beyond the
traditional interest in channel structures, supply chains, logistics systems, and retailing
found in much of the marketing literature. Figure 2 shows systems which vary in
structure and in the level of aggregation, with the latter split into three levels micro,
meso, and macro. In this grouping, the meso level is of special interest as it is here that the
interface between micro and macro exists (Liljenstrom and Svedin, 2005, p. 5). It is the
level where a study of the marketing systems found will help us to understand better
how micro and macro systems interact to produce the outcomes found in the real world
of markets. The conventional focus however is on systems in or near the box
at the bottom left of the figure, including single firm offers to a market, distribution
channels, supply chains, and vertical marketing systems.
Structured

Autarchy

Figure 1.
Growth, emergence and
evolution in marketing
systems

Emergent

Purposeful
Source: Adapted from Layton (2009 a,b)

Micro

Meso

Marketing:
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Macro

Autarchy,
Exchange
barter, trade
Peasant
markets

Industry

Emergent
Intermediaries
facilitators

Structured

Farmers
markets

Open
source

Grand
bazaar
Franchise
systems

Channels VMS
Supply
chains
Purposeful

203

Traderoutes,
silk road etc

Single business

Industry
clusters
National tourism

Aalsmeer
flower auction

Business
networks

Malls

Business
ecosystems

Ebay

Commodity
marketing systems

Aggregate
marketing
system

Centrally
planned
systems

Source: Adapted from Layton (2009 a,b)

Just what then is a marketing system? Adapting slightly previously published material,
this author now defines it as follows (Layton, 2007, 2008):
A marketing system is:
.
a network of individuals, groups and/or entities;
.
embedded in a social matrix;
.
linked directly or indirectly through sequential or shared participation in
economic exchange;
.
which jointly and/or collectively creates economic value with and for customers,
through the offer of;
.
assortments of products, services, experiences, and ideas; and
.
that emerge in response to or anticipation of customer demand.
Drawing on the work of ecologists (Holling, 2001), economists (North, 1990), complex
systems theorists (Mitchell, 2009), and other social scientists (Fligstein, 2001), and
following the lead of Hunt (2000) and Vargo and Lusch (2004) it suggested that a theory
of marketing systems could be built around the following fundamental propositions:
P1.

Economic exchange is always embedded in a marketing system.

This P1 establishes the first stage in a bridge linking micro with macro marketing
phenomena. It asserts that economic exchange must always be studied in context,
and that the appropriate contexts will always include one or more marketing systems.
Decision makers participating in the exchange will be influenced in their choices both

Figure 2.
Mapping marketing
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by the structure and functioning of the relevant marketing systems, and by the
immediate and more distant environments in which these marketing systems are
operating. This is the case for economic exchange wherever it is found from exchange
in hunter-gatherer communities to exchange in the virtual worlds found in the internet,
from a supermarket purchase to complex multi-party commodity transactions, from the
historic world of the Greek agora to contemporary electronic hubs, and from
individualistic Western communities to collectivist Asian societies.
Perhaps, most importantly in the context of this paper, this P1 points the way to an
integration of contemporary marketing theory and practice which is focussed on the
decision processes of managers and customers and based on the economics of scale
with a theory of marketing systems based on the economics of diversity. Marketing
theory explores the choices open to decision makers operating within a marketing
system, a marketing system which provides the context for managerial and consumer
choice. In this sense, the marketing theory based on scale is complemented by the
marketing theory of diversity. Taken together, they provide an inclusive, interactive
view encompassing both decision and environment.
In contemporary marketing, management decisions and customer choices are
influenced by both the immediate and more distant environment as seen by each
decision maker; this proposition suggests that the relevant immediate environment is
that associated with a focal marketing system, which in turn influences and is influenced
by the wider institutional and knowledge contexts. Environment is thus partially
endogenous and partially exogenous in the formation of marketing choice. It is certainly
not just an external influence to be factored into a decision analysis.
A final observation to note at this point is that if it is one or more marketing systems
which provide the environment shaping managerial decision then it is marketing
systems and not industries where competition and cooperation will occur and where
power and influence will be exercised. Also, it is the properties of marketing systems
rather than the notion of industry that should shape strategy:
P2.

The primary function of a marketing system is to offer customers an

assortment consisting of a set of goods, services, experiences, and ideas.

A focus on the diversity found in exchange systems highlights the importance of

assortment, the set of goods, services, experiences, and ideas offered by a marketing
system in response to or anticipation of customer needs and interests. While marketing
theory and practice has been primarily concerned with the successful management of
individual products or services, a theory based on diversity has the capacity to add
another significant dimension.
Diversity is experienced through the customer choices made from among the
assortments offered, assortments made accessible by a marketing system.
These assortments can range from the goods and services offered by a supermarket,
to the choice of shops to visit within a shopping center or market, to the service offer of a
major accounting practice, to the range of destinations offered to a tourist, to the rides in
a theme park or the exhibits in a museum or art gallery. In each case, it is choice from
diversity that is the defining theme.
Assortments at any point in the operation of a marketing system may be looked at in
terms of what is offered, what customers are seeking, what is in fact accessible to
potential customers, and then what is actually acquired and accumulated. While it is

obvious that each of these assortment concepts offered and sought, accessible and
acquired, and accumulated are closely related, the links between each are not well
understood. Retailing studies have looked at customer responses to store assortments,
and in particular at the composition of the resulting shopping baskets. Shopping centre
design has been concerned with the optimal mix or assortment of stores to include in a
centre, and with the mix of service attributes to be offered. Product line policies have
been explored in the marketing and strategic management literatures. Variety in global
trade flowing from comparative advantage has been considered by economists and more
generally by geographers. The need to move beyond one-dimensional analyses of
product/service offers is now clear and that need is attracting growing attention.
In a multi-level marketing system, assortments or heterogeneous value sets will
usually arise at many points and at each of the different levels. At a micro level, a sellers
offer will often include more than one product or service. It will on occasion be
differentiated from that of another seller by a willingness to involve a buyer in the
co-creation of value. At a meso level where micro level systems are aggregated into
complex sequences of offers and acceptances, each contributing to an end-user
assortment through the creation or co-creation of value, assortments arise wherever
sellers and buyers interact. For the community served by the meso level system, the
assortment or heterogeneous value set of goods, services, experiences, and ideas offered
to ultimate customers is a direct indicator of the relative success or failure of the system.
At a macro, economy-wide level the aggregate marketing system offers an even richer
array of goods, services, experiences, and ideas to ultimate customers. At each level, and
at any point, failure to meet buyer needs in offered and accessible assortments will
directly affect the effectiveness of the aggregate marketing system.
From a macro-systems perspective, the provision of choice raises some interesting
long-term questions. Is it possible for a marketing system to offer too much choice? From
a customer point of view, too much choice may complicate choice decision processes to a
stage point where some customers begin to look for simplicity. From a wider
sustainability point of view, it may become necessary to limit the choices generated by
aggregate or macro marketing systems. Both kinds of change will impact the width and
depth of the assortments on offer and thus feed back into the demand for specific items
within these assortments. In a world where constraints may be limiting further growth,
markets for quite different product groups may no longer be independent. In such a
world, a marketing-based theory of diversity may be essential in planning both
managerial and social policy:
P3.

Changes in the assortments generated by a marketing system contribute

directly to changes in the quality of life of the customer communities.

For most buyers/customers within a marketing system, it is the ability of the system to
provide assortments that enable them to fulfil their varied needs and wants that will
determine the perceived success or failure of that system. At the macro or aggregate
level, the characteristics of the assortments offered, or not offered, will often be
economically, socially, and politically important. Offering an assortment to a customer
community makes choice a possibility; as Schwartz (2004, p. 3) points out,
choice is essential to autonomy, which is absolutely fundamental to well being.
Although he argues the freedom to choose in a marketplace setting is an important
contribution to well-being, Schwartz also notes that too much choice may not be an

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unrestricted blessing. He identifies (p. 5) the options of voluntary constraint on freedom

of choice, of making good enough decisions in place of optimal but time and resource
consuming choices, and of the lowering of expectations as possible responses to the ever
increasing assortment of goods, services, experiences, and ideas that are on offer in
many marketplaces.
Not all change in assortments offered lead to positive impacts on quality of life.
Restricted access, however, may lead to reduced quality of life and social disruption.
Examples include environmental catastrophes such as earthquakes or tsunamis; the
effects of wars, riots or terrorism; the possibility of economic collapse such as occurred in
Zimbabwe in 2007; or the imposition of political change favouring a centrally planned
economy and restricted consumer choice. In each case, the assortments offered and
accessible are much reduced in both width and depth, this leading to marked reductions
in the quality of life of the affected communities.
Assortments that provide access to drugs, alcohol, or pornography are often socially
unacceptable and the marketing systems that generate these assortments consequently
proscribed. Assortments that encourage obesity, unsustainable energy use, or which
may distract a population from the pursuit of socially important ends may also be
discouraged.
In each of these examples, the assortments generated by marketing systems are
highly visible indicators of the nature of a society, its values and, its commitments.
As such, over the years, many communities have sought to control or limit the
assortments on offer, sometimes restricting access to markets, sometimes banning
specific categories (but often then creating black or underground markets for such goods
or services), sometimes using taxation to raise prices beyond those which some people
can pay, or perhaps through controls or regulations imposed on the marketing systems
which have generated the assortments in question.
The contribution of assortments generated by a marketing system will usually be
positive but may be negative and is not likely to be uniform for each of the customer
groups served by a marketing system. In particular, accessibility in space and time and
by income level, especially the degree of accessibility by ethnic, aged, or disadvantaged
communities, may become critical and politically sensitive concerns. This raises
important issues of distributive justice in the functioning of marketing systems at all
levels of aggregation:
P4.

Marketing systems are influenced by and influence the immediate social matrix
in which they operate and the institutional and knowledge environments in
which they are embedded.

The important relationships are shown in Figure 3.

The immediate social matrix shaping the exchanges characterizing a marketing
system is a distinctive product of the physical, social, and economic settings within
which the flows of exchange occur the people involved and their roles, their trade and
other ties, the medium of exchange, the nature and extent of the social contract
underpinning the exchange processes and similar factors. In the wider context shown in
Figure 3 the factors driving growth at any level of a marketing system are to be found
in the degree of specialization and in the workings of the marketing system structures
and functions that emerge from the effects of role specialization and increasing scale and
diversity. These factors are also directly affected by the growth of knowledge, by

Knowledge
(Romer)

Wealth
(Baumol)

Externalities
sustainability

Knowledge as capital

Specialization

Exchange

Marketing
systems

Institutions as context
Culture
Institutions
(Fligstein)
(North)

Growth,
well-being

Attention
choice

increasing wealth, and by the institutional framework within which the system operates.
Scientific advances, new technologies, and fresh insights into human behaviour provide
both the economic and the social or human capital needed to reframe marketing system
structures and functions (Romer, 1986; Baumol, 2002), thus offering new dimensions to
the assortments generated by marketing systems.
The institutional and infrastructural environment (North, 1990) also plays an essential
part in shaping the contexts within which marketing systems operate. Culture and more
generally social institutions influence the beliefs, norms and regulatory environments
impacting a marketing system; these together with the physical infrastructure of a
community such as roads, railways, canals, and communication links provide the
institutional settings making it possible for the essential flows of ownership, possession,
information, money, and risk to take place within a marketing system.
Not only is the growth, adaptation and evolution of a marketing system shaped by the
social matrix and the environments in which it is embedded; it is also possible that the
operation of a marketing system may also influence each of these environmental
settings. The desirability or otherwise of the outcomes generated by a marketing system
may feed back to influence aspects of the social matrix. In the wider environmental
contexts, the search for new knowledge may be driven in part by the desire of system
participants to innovate in order to meet potential market needs. A similar drive may be
found in the urge to open up new markets and to establish new patterns of trade.
The changing assortments on offer in local communities as a result of opening up trade
routes across the Mediterranean some 3,000 years ago and the passion for Chinoiserie
experienced by European markets 300 years ago, illustrate the ability of marketing
systems to change social and institutional settings.
Although it is at the macro level where the scale and diversity characterising
marketing systems and their environments works to ensure the interdependence of
environment and system (Wal Mart is a contemporary example where the
interdependence of local or regional politics and firm performance is an essential
factor in managerial and social policy), this can occur as well in meso and micro
marketing systems. New shopping centers, entertainment facilities, the emergence of
industrial clusters or the establishment of a new, micro business in a community will all
react to and generate change in the local knowledge and institutional environments.

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Figure 3.
Marketing systems,
economic growth and
well-being

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Marketing systems then have important externalities impacts on environment, on

social institutions, social life and well being, on politics and power, and on religious and
other values. They are also shaped by the environments in which they operate:
P5.

208

Marketing systems are complex, adaptive systems.

Mitchell (2009, p. 12) has defined a complex (adaptive) system as:

[. . .] a system in which large networks of components with no central control and simple rules
of operation give rise to complex collective behaviour, sophisticated information processing,
and adaptation via learning or evolution.

She went on to suggest an alternative definition, a system which exhibits non-trivial

emergent and self-organizing behavior (p. 13). Both definitions encompass most
marketing systems and point to system attributes that these marketing systems might
be expected to display. The exceptions consist of those systems that are limited in the
number of individuals or entities and/or the number of links between these entities.
Examples might include small isolated self-sufficient peasant communities, or those
where reciprocative or redistributive trading patterns (Polanyi, 1957) are to be found. As
the number of entities engaged in trade or the number of linkages between them
increase, Kauffman (1995) found that a point is reached where complex behaviour
patterns emerge. This moment of complexity (Taylor, 2001) marks an important but
unexplored transition in the growth, adaptation, and evolution of marketing systems.
Where the transition has occurred, the characteristics of complex, adaptive systems
come into play. As such, marketing systems can be expected to show characteristics of
non-linearity in key relationships, to generate emergent order, to be characterised by
path dependence over time and discontinuity, and to be loosely coupled, falling
dynamically somewhere between equilibrium and chaos, between anarchy and control.
They are inherently dynamic and often unstable.
P6.

The entities comprising a marketing system may themselves be marketing

systems.

This proposition relates to the level of aggregation of the system that is under
consideration. The simplest marketing system is one involving a single seller and
a single buyer. Now extend this to include a set of similar sellers and a set or sets of
buyers participants engaging in exchange under conditions of perfect or, in practice,
imperfect knowledge, where confidence, fairness, corruption, money illusion, and
rumour all contribute to decisions. This is the micro marketing system most studied in
contemporary microeconomics and in micro or managerial marketing. The transaction
or flow of transactions takes place within a specified social matrix, and interest centres
on the decision processes adopted and their outcomes accepted by both sellers and
buyers. Sellers may and often will be complex organisations, and often marketing
systems in their own right. Buyers may be individuals, households or organizations.
The relationships that form between seller and buyer over time in a series of repeated
transactions may be of central interest. In particular, the basis for exchange will often,
if not always, be grounded in service, with value being co-created through the
interactions between seller and buyer.
At a slightly higher, or meso, level of aggregation, a marketing system may form
around groups or clusters of sellers (firms) offering similar or mutually supporting

products/services to groups of buyers; or a number of firms may cooperate for example

in creating supply chains or global commodity chains; or sellers may congregate in a
market place, shopping strip or mall. Here, too, the participating entities may be micro or
meso level systems, competing or cooperating within the context of a system at a slightly
higher of aggregation.
An understanding of meso level marketing systems will typically turn on an analysis
of the interactions between and among systems at higher and lower levels of
aggregation, something that is a continuing challenge in many of the social sciences.
Finally, there is a macro level of analysis, illustrated by the work of Wilkie and Moore
(1999). When the marketing system is referred to, it is usually this level of analysis that is
in mind:
P7.

The effectiveness of a marketing system will be determined by its capacity to

provide accessible assortments in response to changing customer needs for
each of the customer groups it is intended to serve.

The ability of a marketing system to respond to changing customer needs depends on the
flows of information within the system, the rigidity or flexibility of the decision processes
adopted by key decision makers, and the ability of the system to implement the needed
changes. Systemic lags and leads in each of these areas will play important roles in the
timeliness of the response. In the longer run, these and similar factors will determine the
survival or collapse of a marketing system. At a macro level, as Tainter (1988) has noted, a
collapse of key marketing systems may induce the collapse of a complex society.
In the shorter term, accessibility is critical. Accessibility here reflects spatial, time,
communication, affordability, and continuity considerations in the exchanges taking
place within the system as customer groups seek to satisfy individual and/or collective
goals. If this is to be achieved, attention must be given both to the heterogeneity within
each element of the marketing system, and to the pattern of interactions, interactions
within the system, with higher, parallel and lower level systems, with the external social
matrix, and with the wider institutional and knowledge environment:
P8.

Persistent discrepancy in marketing systems is a driver of innovation and

contributes directly to economic growth.

Alderson (1965) pointed out that assortments at any point in a marketing system can be
discrepant. This happens when a significant number of customers look for something in
an accessible assortment and do not find it, or reject what is available. Anticipating or
responding to perceptions of discrepancy is a hallmark of entrepreneurship and a driver
of economic growth (Baumol, 2002). It was not always the case.
In a period beginning some 350 years ago in Britain, the industrious revolution
(De Vries, 2008, p. x) initiated a new view of household economic behaviour that became
increasingly influential, increasing simultaneously the supply of market-oriented
production and the demand for a broad but not indiscriminate range of consumer
goods. In many respects, this period marked the starting point for the emergence,
growth and evolution of the complex marketing systems, a process that has continued
apace to this day. It was a consumer dynamic that was driven by a need to experience
novelty and change in everyday life, and by a desire to enrich existing patterns of life.
The perception of gaps in the assortments of goods, services, experiences, and ideas and
a growing sense that these gaps could be identified and, in part at least, satisfied was

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something that had not previously been experienced by the majority of consuming
households. To be, sure the wealthy did have wide-ranging assortments of goods and
services available to them. The difference now was that this ability to choose was
becoming available to the new working class in Britain, a marketing segment created by
revolutions in agriculture and in industry and underpinned by advances in technology,
communication, and organization.
With continuing change in global and local economies, in culture and society, and in
technology, household consumption patterns also changed. This created persistent
discrepancy in increasingly complex networks of marketing systems, thus generating
the creative destruction and new product growth that characterizes contemporary
economies.
Marketing the next 100 years
Has marketing lost its way? As a social discipline and a marketing practice, it is
confronted with external challenges to its relevance in a world which is changing
quickly under the impacts of environmental pressures, globalization, dramatic shifts in
economic power and growth possibilities. There are also increasing concerns about
distributive justice in the outcomes achieved by marketing, and worries that marketing
might overwhelm long-standing cultures and societies. Internally, marketing has its
own critics, concerned at the narrowness of much of marketing theory and research,
worried by an inability to see the bigger picture that is emerging where marketing
scholarship is being overtaken by inroads from cognate social sciences.
Looking back, the origins of this situation are to be found in the narrow managerial focus
that dominated marketing thought in the post war world of 50 years ago. The limitations of
this approach were felt by many scholars and attempts made to broaden the focus from
economic exchange, to look for ways in which managerial insights could be applied to
resolve social challenges in the form of social marketing, to explore macromarketing ideas
as complements to a managerial approach, and in some cases to establish alternative
schools of thought concentrating on consumer culture, marketing history, and quality of life.
While all of these efforts have played an important role in the development of marketing, the
deeper answer is to be found in revisiting the work of Adam Smith. His analysis of British
society in the early days of the industrial revolution, when he sought to understand the
origins of the wealth that was then being created, highlighted the importance of
specialization and the division of labour. Specialization enabled producers to exploit the
wealth creating potential of increasing returns to scale. It was this realization that
underpinned the development of classical microeconomics and which in turn was central to
the development of managerial marketing. This is the economics or marketing of scale.
Specialization however had another consequence that has been largely overlooked and
which holds the key to a much wider and more generalized understanding of marketing. If
producers chose to specialize, then they must buy from someone else the goods and services
they no longer have time to make or perform. As the division of labour and specialization
begin to spread in a community, more and more goods and services have to be traded.
Producers in their role as consumers seek to acquire a mix of goods and services that
matches their needs, filling the gaps left as they move from self-sufficiency to specialization.
Consumers in their role as producers will seek to put together product/service combinations
that can be traded for the things they need. As producers, they will build on distinctive
capabilities to provide goods or services that capture competitive advantage, responding

to the opportunities created by a diversity of consumer needs. This is the economics or

marketing of diversity. Scale and diversity are thus inseparable consequences of trade.
As the number and volume of traded goods and services increases, patterns begin to
form in the flows of exchange. Markets develop and form increasingly complex
networks of exchange transactions. These emergent networks, here called marketing
systems, are central to an understanding of the logic of diversity. The concept of a
marketing system includes the idea of a market for a specific product or group of
products, but it goes much further to embrace the bazaars and souks of the Arab world,
the shopping malls of the west, and the financial exchanges of the global community.
At a primitive level, a marketing system might be thought of in terms of a single
seller-single buyer transaction, perhaps repeated over time. At a slightly higher level of
aggregation, a marketing system might be formed around a single store or supermarket,
or perhaps a group of such stores. Or it could be seen in the growth of an industrial
cluster, in the emergence of business eco-systems, or in state-controlled commodity
trading structures. Any and all of these and many such networks have attributes in
common that serve as the basis for a theory of marketing systems.
Looking ahead to the development of marketing over the next 100 years, it is this theory,
a theory which has its origins in the study of diversity in exchange, that holds the key to the
extension of marketing thought needed to respond to the challenges mentioned earlier. In
this way, a viable restructuring of the field becomes possible, one that could open the door
to fresh thinking in each of the areas found so troubling. These include environmental
pressures, globalization, dramatic shifts in economic power, and growth possibilities,
increasing concerns about distributive justice in the outcomes achieved by marketing, and
worries that marketing might overwhelm long-standing cultures and societies.
The extension in mind also addresses directly the limitations of the managerial
approach to marketing in dealing with these and similar issues. Social marketing concerns
might often be better thought of in terms of the design of social marketing systems dealing
with macro issues such as the restructuring of health systems underway in America and
elsewhere, the development of more effective food distribution systems, or the rebuilding
of social networks dealing with poverty, disability, and isolation. Policy issues ranging
from gun control in America, to the control of drugs in many nations, to worries about the
logic of anti-trust or trade practices legislation at a time when marketing systems are
changing almost everyday each have dimensions that tap into the performance of an
underlying network of multi-level marketing systems. The rapid changes in critical
technologies effecting communication, health, and privacy are driving marketing system
change. These developments need to be understood in that context as well as many others.
The paper began with the idea that marketing is concerned with the creation and delivery
of a standard of living. This is a noble aspiration that might now be able to be realised.
Management, then, is not all there is in marketing!
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About the author

Roger A. Layton is Emeritus Professor in the School of Marketing, Australian School of
Business, University of New South Wales (UNSW). He was appointed Foundation Professor of
Marketing in UNSW in 1967. His publications have appeared in the Journal of Macromarketing,
Journal of Marketing Research, and in other publications. He was awarded the Order of Australia
for his services to marketing and is an Honorary Citizen of Guangzhou in China, in recognition of
his contributions to higher education in China. Roger A. Layton can be contacted at: r.layto
n@unsw.edu.au

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