Critical Marketing Studies

This major reference collection, Critical Marketing Studies, directs its attention to highlighting how marketing as academic discipline and practical endeavour have developed and continue to change. As a practical exercise, marketing is concerned with meeting and satisfying customer needs, provided, that is, such an exercise would benefit the organisation and its stakeholders. Much more than that, marketing has become a highly influential activity in social, political and economic arenas. Consequently, it is now an appropriate time to call attention to marketing theory and practice, revealing those background assumptions that pervade the discipline and the effects of marketing as a societal practice.

Volume I provides the basis from which more critical marketing studies can be introduced and focuses on the ‘broadening of marketing’ from its initial focus ...

Critical Marketing Studies: Introduction and Overview

MarkTadajewski and PaulineMaclaran

Introduction

In the late 1960s, a small, but steadily growing cadre of scholars began to scrutinise the central tenets of marketing. Kangun (1972), for example, registered that marketing activities contributed to economic growth, but was concerned that the negative impact of marketing on society was passing ‘unrecognized and unchallenged’. Fisk (1974), likewise, made reference to some of the benefits of marketing for society and at the same time acknowledged the externalities of marketing practice.

He was particularly concerned about the sustainability of then current levels of consumption. While he saw these as extremely problematic, he nevertheless believed that marketing techniques and tools were ‘capable of promoting socially desirable long-run environmental goals’ (Fisk, 1974: 5). On a related theme, other ...

locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles