Marketing and market

抄録

In this paper, a contradiction that has developed between the key economic institution of modernity, the market, and its institutionalized practices, marketing, is explored. This paper makes observations beyond earlier discussions of this contradiction based on the history of perspectival developments in the orientations of the discipline and in marketing practices. Specifically, separation of marketing practice from consumers resulting in its conceptualization as a provisional set of activities, and the turn from a focus on needs to a focus on exchange resulting in an emphasis on the health of the market rather than on the health of the people are articulated. It is observed that these developments in marketing orientations signal a reversal of ends and means. It is argued that the modern market, its growth and prosperity, which was originally conceptualized as a means, as one institution to serve humanity's needs, is now an end, and that human beings are now in the service of the economic goals of the market. Based on these observations, the paper proposes that to develop solutions for the problems arising from the historical growth of the marketing discipline and practices in modernity, a new perspective needs to be adopted, one that conceptualizes marketing as cultural practices embedded in communities and involving consumers and organizations as partners in being mutually involved in the construction and fulfillment of human desires.