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发表于 2011-7-14 23:21:45
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Production and Development of Marketing
Focus on:
1. What are the connotation and features of marketing?
2. What is the main pathway on which marketing evolves?
3. Discuss the contributions to marketing by classical schools, management schools and behavior schools.
4. Analyze the concerns for marketing by commodity research approach, functional research approach, institutional research approach, management research approach and systematical research approach.
1.1 Production of Marketing
As an applied science, marketing is based both on such theories as management, psychology, and sociology and on the social practice. Its origin, development and application depend on the marketing practice of the firm and also react on it. The scholars at home and abroad have been making an extensive and deep study of the birth and growth of the marketing idea, of which the exploration of marketing by Peter Druke, a famous professor in management in the Western University of the United States is well established by many marketing experts.
Peter Druke thought that the marketing was originated in Japan during the 17th century. He also pointed out that until the mid of the 19th century, the marketing came into being in the United States, and that in the western countries, the first that regards the marketing as a distinctive function of the firm and the satisfaction of the customer’s demands as the special task of management is Cyrus H. McCormick (1809-1884), the harvester inventor in the United States. Besides, Cyrus H. McCormick invested the basic tools of the modern marketing, i.e. market research and analysis, market positioning concepts, pricing policies, supplying parts and various services for customers and providing them with the payment credit by installments, etc.
Half century passed and the marketing has been studied systematically and used widely in the firms in the United States. By the end of 19th century, the scholars in the United States had started to issue and publish some theories as promotion, products, ads, pricing, product designs, brand business, package and physical distribution and so on. At the beginning of the early 20th century, “Marketing” had been up on the stage of the universities in the United States. For example, W. E. Kreusi taught a course named “The Marketing of Products” in the University of Pennsylvania in 1905; R. S. Butler in the University of Wisconsin taught “Marketing Methods” in 1910. Butler said that personnel promotion and ads must relate to the final outcome of the selling concept. In 1912, the Harvard University published the first teaching book of the marketing written by J. E. Hagertgy in the world, in which the issues about promotion, distribution, and ads, etc. were discussed comprehensively. As soon as the book was spread, a great response from the enterprise was made. Some of them established marketing departments in their organization such as Curtis Publishing Company in 1911, U. S. Rubber Company in 1916, etc.
However, the study on the marketing of this time is mostly based on the seller market which is quite different from the principles and concepts of modern marketing. Moreover, the content is narrow and limited in goods distribution and advertisement promotion, etc. So the principles, concepts and discipline systems of the modern marketing are still to be built.
From the 30s of the 20th century, marketing has been emphasized and different points and views and research approaches of various schools have been put forward successively. Then, the serious economic crisis broke out in the western world. The goods of the manufacturer couldn’t be sold out, firms broke down one after another, and the unemployed increased greatly. All this led to grave problems in selling the products. So, some theoretic researchers in economy were engaged in solving these social economic problems. However, the scholars were still limited in studying the circulation field. Namely, they laid emphasis on the question how to promote the products produced in a larger scale and on the know-how of promotion, advertisements, and promoting tactics.
In this period, marketing organizations with various forms were set up one after another in the United States. In 1937, American Marketing Association (AMA) was founded, in which not only the learners who were engaged in the economic theory research but also the managers of all walks of life joined to make a conjoint study of the marketing theories and their application. At the same time, the special research class was established to teach the managers of enterprises the marketing course in order to train the promoter. In this way, the marketing was determined as a discipline. The theoretical systems of the marketing were initially constructed, too.
1.2 Development of Marketing
In forming and developing the marketing theories, classical schools, management schools and behavior schools, etc. were born gradually. Different schools have established their own views, features and specialties because of the research method, interests, importance, and the individual background. They have been accelerating the development and progress of the marketing theory jointly, promoting the set-up and improvement of the marketing system as a discipline. They have contributed much in establishing and upgrading the marketing.
1.2.1 Classical Schools
In the period of the founding of marketing theories the classical schools formed, namely the commodity school, the functional school，the regional school，the institutional school and so on. The classical schools played a historical role in establishing and developing the marketing. Although lots of new schools are coming up, the classical schools still remain well known in the academic field.
1. Commodity School
Among these schools, the commodity school enjoys a long history. It started at the entrance of the 20th century. Its basic principle is that since the marketing concerns the flow of the relative goods from producers to consumers, the marketing discipline should focus on the object (product) transaction. As the scholars of the early commodity school said, that if the products in the marketing exchange could be classified in a reasonable way, the marketing discipline would make more progress in science. So they pointed out that in a perfect classified system of merchandizes, each product was not isolated and sophisticated links existed among goods. Therefore, these goods can be arranged into the category with the relative homogeneity in which all the products can be marketed in the same methods and know-how. As for the commodity school, it is an important task to classify the merchandizes.
In the early stage of the commodity school, Charles Parlin first put forward the merchandize classification framework in 1912. According to his theory, women merchandizes can be divided into three categories: convenient goods, urgent goods and option goods. The convenient goods are those daily bought as food, groceries, etc. The urgent goods include medicines and those needed unexpectedly. The option goods refer to those that need to make a selection and that allow to be postponed buying.
In 1923, another famous classification of the merchandize was proposed by M. Cope. He classified the merchandize into convenience, option and peculiarity. The convenience can be found in the convenient shop and familiar to the customer; the option is the goods that the consumer always makes a careful comparison of price, quality and patterns of the product before buying decisions. After the birth of demands, the real buying behavior is often delayed and their satisfaction is less important than that of the convenience; the peculiarity is more attractive in distinctiveness than in price to consumers. The consumer pays more attention to the producer’s and the retailer’s brand or credit and service quality than the other elements in buying.
In 1958, L.V. Aspinwall, a famous scholar of the commodity school proposed a method of classifying the goods. He divided the goods into the red, the orange and the yellow and also ordered them in the light of the total relative value of the product features. These features were introduced as follows:
(1) turnover rate. The proportion that the customers choose and use a certain product is made to satisfy their needs.
(2) aggregate profits. The final difference is realized between the price and the cost.
(3) flexibility. The services are added to the product for the sake of better satisfying the consumer’s needs.
(4) consuming time. It refers to the period needed in using the product.
(5) selection time. It means the average distance measured to the retailing shop. In the end, L.V. Aspinwall listed a system of classifying the product called “The Characteristics of Goods Theory” by him.
The early commodity school believed that the classification approach can overcome the difficulties faced by most marketing practices and in operation the following steps as classifying various products into the set system and then deploying the correspondent activities in light of their marketing standards of the kind could solve the problem.
In the late 50s to early 60s of the 20th century, considering the deficiencies of classifying the goods of the early commodity school, some scholars put forward that the method that the goods were defined as convenience, option and particulars should be modified and increased the preference on the existing classification.
These scholars thought that the differentiation between the convenience and the option should emphasize the role of consumers, for some products are the option for certain consumers but the convenience for other consumers. Only in the angle of the individual consumer can we precisely define the convenience and the option. With the ongoing development of the marketing and the introduction of the new concepts of other subjects, the marketing scholars kept on presenting the disputes and challenges to the existing classification framework. The commodity school redefined the convenience, the option and the peculiarity.
The convenience refers to the product that the consumer little intervenes because of low prices, being easily damaged or the buying activities of no importance to him. Besides, the consumer often accepts the substituent for the functionality. The option means those that the consumer concerns much before buying and is afraid that the goods bought are unsuitable for him. These concerns can be eased by way of information collection and buying decisions afterwards. The peculiarities are those that can be sorted out into the option both in the economic importance and in the distinction of the product features, but their physical features have few relations with the performance nature sought by the consumer.
In the 70s of the 20th century, three principles were put forward as independent theoretic bases by the commodity school to make the classification system perfect. First, products should be regarded as a combination of the physical elements and the psychological reaction. Second, products should be defined through the consumer’s behavior and the channel reaction and the correspondent measurements could be made between the delivery and the retailing time. Third, there exist links between the product communication structure and the buying behavior. On the basis of the principles, the commodity school added the 4th category of products to the existent categories: the preference goods.
In 1986, in order to apply their classification systems to the transaction, product selling, service, and ideas, the scholars of the commodity school further expounded the convenience, the option, the peculiarity, and the preference with the help of the buying efforts and risk norms related to the price. The detailed definition was presented as follows:
(1) The convenience is the lowest both in the buying efforts and in the risks. That’s to say, the consumer is unwilling to spend too much time and money on these goods and no higher risks are felt in the decision-making.
(2) The preference has more buying efforts and risks than the convenience. In fact, the difference between the convenience and the preference lies in the perceptible risks. The reason that makes the consumer feel high risks usually comes from the marketing activities, especially from the brand and the ads.
(3) The option is the goods that the consumer is willing to spend more time and money in seeking for and evaluating. This high participation also makes the consumer perceive higher and higher risks.
(4) The peculiarity is very high in risks and efforts. The difference between the option and the peculiarity lies in the buying efforts, not in risks. The peculiarity is often priced high and needs much time to be bought. However, the buyer is not willing to accept any substituent for the peculiarity.
The scholars of the commodity school emphasized that the classification system of any products has the same target: to guide the decision of the managers. Although the commodity school has made a detailed study of various kinds of products and their classification and played an important role in the marketing advancement and practices, it lacks a further exploration of the marketing environment, the motivation of the consumer behavior and the specific needs of the different goods to the marketing.
2. Functional School
This school regards the marketing behavior as its focus. Being different from the commodity school, the functional school focuses on the “how to do” in the marketing while the commodity school on the “what the marketing is”.
Arch Shaw was considered as the founder of the functional school. He first proposed the classification method in accordance with the marketing functions: (1) risk-taken; (2) goods delivery; (3) financing; (4) sales efforts; (5) making a centralization, arrangement and trans- shipping of the product.
In 1950, Edmund Mercalli improved his own classification framework based on the former categories, which consists of the following six functions:
(1) Communication functions. Seek for the latent consumer or supplier and making a connection with him.
(2) Merchandising functions. Take all kinds of activities relative to the production and to the satisfaction of the customer’s needs.
(3) Pricing functions. Deal with the price issues as product supplying or acceptability.
(4) Publicity functions. Persuade the latent customer into buying some product and try to retain him.
(5) Logistic functions. Transport and stock the product.
(6) Terminal functions. Respond to the change of the management and responsibility of the product.
In 1960, McCarthy advanced the 4Ps theory, i.e. Product, Price, Place and Promotion, which was originated from the classification system of the early functional school as Weld, Leyen, especially Mercalli.
The functional school has assimilated the classification approach of the commodity school and mainly studied the marketing activities in the angle of the marketing functions, of which the classification outcomes of Mercalli are well established. They include such functions as communication, exchange, pricing, publicity, logistics and terminal, on the base of which Mercalli initially proposed the typical theory of 4Ps.
3. Regional School
The scholars of the regional school concern more the space role between the transaction parties on the base of accepting the research outcomes of the commodity and the functional schools. It was produced in the 1930s.
The commodity school and the functional school came into being in the 1920s. Until the 1930s, the regional school was born and its development was due to William J. Reilly, who tried to explain the relative attractiveness of the commercial areas in two different cities to the citizens living there in his book entitled “The Law of Retail Gravitation” in 1931 with the mathematical formula. Enlightened by him, P. D. Converse put forward the “New Laws of Retail Gravitation” in 1949 that was used to judge the limitation between the trade center and the trade area. As soon as the trade area was determined in the town, the merchants could decide where they should make their transaction activities and their advertisement. On the basis of the existent study, Hoover advanced a forecasting sales model, which showed more rationality in the analysis of the retail transaction.
Soon afterwards, some scholars of the regional school diverted their attention from the retail to the wholesale and made an analysis of the regional variable about the effects of the space distance on the sales organization. The regional structure was much connected with the wholesale system. The regional variable affecting the structure was first the space distance between the supplying place of the basic materials and the firm using them, in which the transportation system emphasized the initial influence. Then the next variable was the space distribution pattern of the intermediary wholesaler. The distribution of the retailer and the final consumers played a revised role in the above effects. To further establish the theory of the regional wholesales structure, they raised eight factors influencing the wholesales market scale: (1) product weights relative to the value; (2) easily corrosive; (3) technique of the product differentiation; (4) elements affecting the factory location; (5) price and its strategy; (6) efficiency and services of transport; (7) marketing means of the individual firm; (8) additional services.
Besides, the regional school made an analysis of the geographical variable on the ratio between the wholesales and the retails by using the statistical research data of the United States. The scholars of the regional school thought that the business’ behaviors such as the geographical location, the space expansion in selling and buying, and the relations among the supply and the demand in the marketing channel, should be considered not only from the price and sales, but also from the natural and social conditions. Recently, the regional school is focusing on the study of the mathematical model in the field of trade, for example, the models in assessing the coincidence of the boundaries between the two markets and the location selection of the retailing shops, etc.
The status, quantity and positions of the competitors among regions are often different, and the demands either of the final consumer, of intermediaries or of governments are various, too. In this way, the regional school bases its study on regional markets to explore the marketing issues such as regional competition and demands and the related strategies.
4. Institutional School
The institutional school was born at the beginning of the 20th century and dominated the same position as the commodity school and the functional school. However, the institutional school laid its more emphasis on the research of the marketing organization.
L. D. H. Weld was regarded as the founder of the institutional school and he raised an issue on the marketing channel efficiency in the book “The Marketing of Farm Products” published in 1916. In 1923, Ralph Starr Butter, manager of the Publicity Development in the U. S. Rubber Company published a book called “Marketing and Merchandising” which contributed much to the early development of the structure school. He laid emphasis on the effectiveness of the intermediary to the producer and the consumer. He thought that an important role of the intermediary was to create effectiveness, namely, the basic effectiveness, the form effectiveness, the place effectiveness and the time effectiveness. The market organization could do nothing to the basic and the form effectiveness, but played an important role in the place and the time effectiveness. That’s to say, the intermediary could create them and bring the goods from the production place to the consuming area and sell the product to the consumer when it was needed. In this period, many scholars joined in the Institutional School and aired their own opinions. Ralph Frederick Breyer in the University of Pennsylvania explained the process forming the marketing structure in his book “The Marketing Institutions”. He proposed that it was necessary to construct huge and complicated commercial mechanisms so as to achieve the marketing activities. We had found that the marketing function had something to do with the overcoming the difficulties of merchandize exchange, which needed us to spend much time and work in combining such elements as land, labor forces, capitals and other sources and in reasonably allocating and coordinating them in the light of quality and quantity in order to set up a work organ, of which all the parts should be considered commercially and linked to the marketing.
Some scholars of this school also made a study of the vertical integration. They thought that the firm could play more roles in production and distribution, which both reduced the marketing cost and insured the output of the finished products and the supplying of the raw materials. The reduction of the marketing cost could be realized through cutting down the process of continuous buying and selling due to the vertical integration in the firm’s operation. The integration is an effective approach to reduce the marketing cost, but causes grave problems in management and coordination.
From 1954 to 1973, the institutional school began to analyze the production of the marketing channel, the evolution of the channel structure and the design of the framework with high efficiency by way of the principles of economics.
During this period, F. C. Bauldston attempted to explain how to design marketing channels that could make the marketer obtain more profitability. He had explored an approach how an individual firm designed its channel. He believed that the individual firm faced channel-designing problems in some aspects and not in the whole marketing systems. Besides, the Institutional School had done some research in the integration theory that said the central channel coordinating system included three categories, i.e. the firm’s marketing system, the management strategy and contracts. The firm’s marketing system was a successive stage of production and distribution under the single property while the management strategy was able to co-operate the flow of goods and services so as to get the systematic thriftiness. The contracts could influence the channel, too.
In 1965 and 1973, some theories explained and foresaw the channel structure, and pointed out the deficiencies of the institutional school said. Besides, they made a deep study of the connotation about the deferring and speculation.
If the distribution channel was regarded as postponement, it was a tool for an independent organization to transfer the risks of all goods to another independent one. For manufacturers, he would refuse production unless he received no orders and then the correspondent risks were passed to the buyer; as for the intermediary, two kinds of postponement existed: one was called backward postponement, i.e. refusing to buy and the other was forward postponement, i.e. buying when he was sure to be able to sell out; the consumer realized the postponement by buying in the retailer.
The speculation theory meant that all the changes of the physical forms of goods or the move of the product in the inventory should be done in the marketing process as early as possible in order to reduce the cost of the marketing system.
In light of the deferring and speculation theories, the production of the inventory stage can be explained as follows: as for buyers and sellers, only if the net revenue surpasses the additional cost in the period of retardation, the inventory will be sure to happen.
1.2.2 Management Schools
Management schools came out from the 1940s to 1950s, and included the management school, the systematic school, the social exchange school, etc. They were lying in the transition period when the western countries were transformed from the seller market to the buyer market. In the new situation of the buyer market, the decision-makers of firms must think it over how to cater to the buyer’s needs in the marketing. That’s to say, they must learn how to face the market, adapt to the market and expand the market.
1. Management School
Since the end of the 1950s, as the buyer market was becoming bigger and bigger, the marketing research has been further extended so as to meet the needs of the marketing practice. Such concepts as “marketing myopia”, “marketing mix”, and “market segmentation”, etc. were fabricated. These concepts laid their emphasis on consumers in the marketing research, which played an important role in the marketing theory and practice. From then on, the marketing management thoughts have begun to be grown up.
Initially, the management school advanced the marketing concept, which explained that seeking for the production efficiency alone was possibly myopic. The marketer should pay more attention to the consumer’s wants and demands before making the production decision. If it wants to win in the changing competitive market, the firm must take the competitive role and efficiency into consideration correctly before the use of the marketing activities and understand all sorts of knowledge about consumers. Managerially, the primary task of the marketing would rather make the commercial behavior suitable for the consumer’s benefits than master the know-how to let the consumer behave as the commercial benefits.
Besides, the management school has proposed many theories and views that are still being used substantially in the nowadays marketing textbooks.
Considering the different aims of the consumer buying behavior, the management school insisted for the first time in 1956 that marketers should segment the market and strive to establish various marketing combinations so as to satisfy the different demands of the consumer.
In light of the market segmentation theory, to better satisfy the consumer’s demands, the market should be divided into some small homogeneous niches among which the differentiation exists. The main contribution of this school lies in: telling the market segmentation from the product differentiation; the application of the market segmentation in the industrial market; the quantitative analysis of the market segmentation. Besides, the scholars of this school had put forward the principles of how the marketing manager should deal with various elements as products, price, place and promotion in the marketing combination.
In the product decision, the most important achievement is the introduction of the product life cycle. Its application is embodied in the following: in one hand, its systematic framework like production, development, maturation and decline can be used to explain the market impetus; on the other hand, it can be applied as a forecasting model to interpret when changes happen and when the take-over from one stage to another comes.
In pricing, the school strives to change the economic theory into the normalized rules so that the marketing management can easily make practices. The management school advocates that marketers can adopt the multi-stage analyzing method as pricing tools. This method divides the main factors to be considered in the pricing decision into six successive steps: (1) choose the target market; (2) select the brand image; (3) determine the marketing combination; (4) formulate the pricing policies; (5) establish the pricing strategy; (6) decide the price. The calculation in each step should simplify the work of the next step and reduce the possibility of the error in the pricing decision according to the above-said steps. In other words, this method translates the pricing decision into several parts of the management and logically, each part comes before the next part of which the decision can make the following less complicated.
In the field of promotion, the scholars of the management school advanced some suggestions on the personnel promotion and the advertisement decision. They insisted that the ads should aim at making the consumer buy the product through a series of marketing activities and that the seller should abandon the deceitful tactics and change the view that explores the market in the compelling personal promoting approach. Recently, they have laid more emphasis on the management of the personal promotion and of the selling field. The issues studied by them include the communication between promoters and consumers, the selling effects, the supervision to the selling forces, and the motive of the promoter, etc.
2. Systematic School
In the 1960s, the systematic school came into being. As the other schools of the marketing, the systematic school appeared with the market environment changing. In the meanwhile, its birth was due to the development of the other disciplines in studying technology, which advanced the scholars to explore the marketing and its activities in the angle of the systematic theory. Particularly, the extensive use of computers makes the word “systematic” more popular in the management literature.
The systematic school holds that a firm should be considered as an integrated system of different functions. In the system, the strength produced in the information, raw materials, human resources, capital, equipments and the flow of funds decides the basic trend of the growth, fluctuations and decline of the firm. The school also points out that production, marketing and consumption should be combined together and analyzed by way of the systematic framework. The marketing issue belongs to the systematic scope that is featured of communication and adaptation in the social organization. The decision maker can spot a series of problems when inspecting the market in the systematic theory and the correspondent feasible solutions are available, which are the reference when he encounters handicaps in solving the relative problems.
The systematic school has explored the systematic theory on the marketing and raised three types of systems: the atomic system, the mechanic system and the biological system. In the atomic system, no single element can influence the whole system and all the elements inter-move and inter-act. Some aspects of the marketing function as the mechanic system acts, such as inventories and distributions. Biology concerns the study of the organic body related to the natural environment and the organized behavior system is the reflection of the biology in the marketing.
The systematic school has made a classification and organization of the marketing thoughts in the micro-analysis method. This method emphasizes some tiny structure as ads and distribution of the sub-system while the macro-analysis method focuses on the systematic behavior of the overall system. Different from the micro-analysis method, the macro-analysis method pays more attention to the behavior patterns under the different conditions though it doesn’t ignore completely the particular marketing phenomenon.
1.2.3 Behavior Schools
Behavior schools composed of the organizational power school, the consumerism school and the buyer behavior school. They paid more attention to the effects of the organizational activities, the individual behavior and the social actions on the marketing and tended to study the issues in a way of multi-disciplines combining the psychology, sociology, and organizational behavior science. The views put forward by them have contributed much in raising the consumer’s satisfaction, safeguarding the consumer’s rights and valuing the marketing in the social economical development.
1. Organizational Power School
The organizational power school is relatively new in the marketing and starts in the 1950s and has grown up in the 1970s and 1980s. In some degree, the organizational power school is the successor of the structural school. The main difference between these two schools is that of the different angle to study the issue. The structural school analyzes the effectiveness of the distribution channel in the angle of economy so as to increase the welfare for the consumer while the organizational power school diverts its concerns from the consumer’s welfare to the target and demands of the distribution member as manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers. In the article “Management of the Manufacturer-Distributor System”, the organizational power school pointed out that manufacturers and distributors form a competitive system that needs management like a single system. The book “Distribution Channels: Behavior Perspective” published in 1969 makes it come to the front stage in the marketing. Its primary topics being discussed include the following:
(1) What is the source of the rights? These rights include coercion and non-coercion.
(2) How should the members of the distribution channel use the obtained rights? Correspondently, how should the marketing manager use his rights?
(3) Measurement methods of the rights. Some scholars are engaged in developing correct and reliable methods to measure the rights and consider that the rights have direct relations with the roles.
(4) What are relations between rights and conflicts?
(5) How should the conflicts be measured? They have analyzed the efficacy of the method measuring the conflicts.
(6) What is the cooperation in the inner organization system? They think that the cooperation refers to a joint action of two or more conductors in the hope that they exchange the resources with equilibrium to realize the targets inside and among the organization.
(7) How does the right influence the bargaining process?
2. Consumerism School
The consumerism school focused its importance on studying the consumer welfare and satisfaction in experience and concepts. For example, it mainly probed the problems as imbalance between buyers and sellers, malpractices of private enterprises in the marketing. Another issue it concerned is the morality in the marketing.
The consumerism school has made a study of the following topics: the product security and the consumer information; the discriminatory issue of the consumer; the satisfaction and dissatisfaction of the consumer.
Some scholars attempted to form the concept of the consumerism school, of which the consumer protectionism was included. Therefore, Peter Druke thought that the consumer regarded the manufacturer as the entity that was interested in the consumer and didn’t really understand him. It is impossible to differentiate the consumers if the manufacturer has not made a deep research of them.
In this school, the most persuasive idea is proposed by Philip Kotler. He considered that the marketing concept on the customer-oriented idea could better cater to the commercial activities to realize the profit of the customer and that the marketing responsibility was to innovate new products that could both satisfy the recent demand of the consumer and upheld the long-term interests of him. So Kotler presented a case on the basis of the recent satisfaction and the long-term interests to differentiate the existent products (see Table 1.1).
Table 1.1 Product Classifications by Kotler
Short-term satisfaction
Long-term interests High Low
High Ideal products Profitable products
Low Pleasant products Flaw products
Besides, the scholars of this school had expounded the nature and role of the marketing ethics, especially the ethical issues in advertisement, personal promotion, pricing, marketing research and international marketing. Overall, the school has turned to the tenet how the marketing encourages the ethical behavior by way of ethical training, orientation, management principles and encouragement in the marketing organization instead of pure criticism to the abnormal marketing activities.
3. Buyer Behavior School
The buyer behavior school is mainly engaged in the research of target customers, customer sizes, customer’s buying incentives, and so on. In their study, the scholars inquires into the buyer’s buying behavior with the aid of methodology of the behavior science, of experimental methods of the applied science, those related to physiology and psychology, and of mathematics, operational research and managerial technology as stochastic process, control on line and optimization, etc. The buyer behavior school has opened up research methodology of modern marketing and made it more matured, more serious and more scientific.
The buyer behavior school emphasizes the customer in the market and has made a study of such issues as who the customer is, how many exist and why the customer buys, etc. This school has the following characteristics:
(1) The consumer behavior is considered as part of the human behavior, and not as the unnatural and abnormal behavior phenomenon. This school tends to understanding and explaining the consumer behavior based on the human behavior and then many theories about the consumer behavior are born. Every theory is built on certain views of psychology, sociology and anthropology, and has raised various explanations to the consumer behavior patterns.
(2) The buyer behavior school has been focusing the package product and the durable consumption goods and is becoming more and more interested in the study of the buying behavior of the industrial and service industries.
(3) This school defines its research field as the choice of brands and not as the others, and thinks that its study aims at the buying behavior and not at the consuming or distributing behavior.
1.3 Connotation and Nature of Marketing
1.3.1 Connotation of Marketing
Marketing is a science to study the marketing activities and their rules of the firm. It absorbs both the principles and techniques of western economy, economical management and econometrics and the theories and methods of sociology, philosophy, politics, behavior psychology and mathematics, etc. In some aspects, it is an integrated and comprehensive applied economy.
1.3.2 Nature of Marketing
Marketing, as a discipline, has its own development tracks and regularity. Its primary features are defined as following:
1. Applicability
Marketing studies not only the basic theory of the market, but also the marketing activities and their rules of the firm. Its purpose is to guide the market operation effectively. Therefore, as a product of the development of the commodity economy to cater to the demands of modern enterprises, the marketing has been highly emphasized and widely used for the decision and practices of the firm’s operation.
2. Comprehensiveness
Modern marketing was initially set up on the theory of economy and further developed into a brand-new science with the absorption and use of the theories and approaches of modern management, behavior science, mathematics, psychology, sociology, biology, package, trademark, and advertisement, etc. As Philip Kotler pointed out that marketing was an applied science based on economy, behavior science, and modern management theory. He also said that economy was the father of marketing; its mother was behavior science; mathematics was the grandfather of it; philosophy, grandmother of it.
3. Practicality
The theory and the contents of the marketing are originated in the marketing experience of the firm and the correspondent study is for the purpose of instructing the marketing practices. With the marketing practices deepened, modern marketing as a science will see a continuous advancement, too.
4. Artistry
The theoretic systems and approaches of modern marketing are easy to be understood and practicable. However, this doesn’t mean that learning some theories and approaches can easily solve the marketing problems, for the linkage between theory and practice is the key to the solution. So we should learn the marketing theory as an art and flexibly use it in the marketing practice.
1.4 Research Approaches of Marketing
Marketing aims at probing the external environments of firms, the consumer behavior and the influence of them on the marketing activities, and the regularity of the whole marketing process in firms. Moreover, the research approaches keep on changing with the reform of the research object and the richness of the research content in the development of the marketing.
1.4.1 Commodity Research Approach
The commodity research approach is also called the product research approach. Its objects are usually some kinds of products and it mainly analyzes the marketing issues. The scholars are always interested in the study of the marketing of certain products, especially that of the non-farming product and the industrial finished outcome. For example, W. E. Krueusi wrote a book “The Marketing of Products” by using the product research approach (in 1905) , in which he had demonstrated the marketing theory with the aid of many cases. Considering that people paid less attention to the marketing of non-farming products, he designed an analysis pattern applied for the marketing of oil, minerals, steel rolling, voyage car and telephone services and so on, and made a deep study of their supply and demand conditions, product features, places, agencies, pricing, distribution costs and trade management, etc.
1.4.2 Functional Research Approach
In 1940, R. Alexander, Sarfare, Ilder and W. Alderson expounded in the book “Marketing” that marketing was a management function. Being Different from the product research approach, they more concern marketing plans, investigation and budget controls and generalize some management functions included in the traditional marketing as merchandized functions, namely, all sorts of activities that regulate commodity production or selling so as to satisfy the consumer demands. They thought that three categories of the marketing function exist: exchange function like buying and selling; supply function like transport and stock; service function like financing, risk taking, and market information, etc.
1.4.3 Institutional Research Approach
The institutional research approach highlights the marketing activities of the various organizations and of all levels like producers, agents, wholesalers, and retailers, etc. in the marketing channel. Its drawbacks mainly lie in the fact that it neglects the consumer demands and still centers around the goods.
1.4.4 Managerial Research Approach
The managerial research approach takes the firm as its main body and synthesizes the elementary demands of the commodity research approach, the institutional research approach and the functional research approach in the angle of marketing management decisions, analyzes the market environment in the light of the target market, and formulates the concerned marketing strategy in accordance with the firm’s resources and aims in order to satisfy the needs of the target market and to reach the firm’s aim.
1.4.5 Systematic Research Approach
The systematic research approach was first proposed in the book entitled “Basic Marketing: Systematic Approach” (1971) written by George S. Downing. Marketing is a total framework of such activities as pricing, promotion, distribution, which can provide the current and latent customers with products and services through all kinds of channels. In the process of marketing, the firm keeps on observing the market, spotting and evaluating various change agents, then, makes a feedback to the managerial level for the sake of elaborating the new strategy and plans of the firm, does away with the handicaps that hinder the realization of the aim by means of the revised action and assesses the response of the customer and of the competitor to the revision, and further formulates the revised strategic plans. So marketing is one function no more, but a process going through the firm’s operation and management. |
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