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The challenge to marketing dominance
R I C H A R D H. BRIEN, BETSY D. GELB, AND WILLIAM D. TRAMMELL
THE CHALLENGE TO MARKETING DOMINANCE Will social responsibility be recognized? Rzchard H. Brien ~s corporate group vice-presidet~t f o r marketing at Dart Industries, Inc., Los Angeles; Betsy D. Gelb is a faculty m e m b e r at the University o f Houston; and William D. Trammell is wzth the Fluor Corporation, Los Angeles.
Marketing has had its greatest success in the United S t a t e s - t h e Marketing Society. This function commands tremendous resources and is disproportionately powerful in comparison to other segments o f society. This dominance is now challenged by consumerism. I f marketing is to act responsibly, it must offer informative marketing and adopt restraint zn the use o f its power. The authors list several examples that would demonstrate marketing's accountability and responsibility. In the business sector, it can focus less on trivia and more on produc[ quality and safety; outside the business sector, it can approach education, religion, government, and the arts to offer a set o f useful tools. The corporation's public affairs executive assures the luncheon clubs that his company knows time have changed. The c o m p a n y
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president echoes the theme before financial analysts: business must act responsibly. The luncheon club audience and the stockbrokers may nod approvingly, but they are listening to the wrong men. Back at the office, those who shape the company's marketing effort are determining the real level of the corporation's social responsibility. And too often all that American society hears from them is a succinct b u t endlessly repeated message: "Buy more!" Social responsibility activists seem to think there are several significant flaws in the narrowness of that message, and ha~;e made the marketing function their primary corporate target. The purpose of this article is to examine the extent of marketing's power, the use of that power, and what it implies. We contend that marketing is the preeminent social force today in the United States to such an extent that the nation may accurately be called The Marketing Society. Further, we assert that marketing's dominance obligates it to assume the responsibility that always must accompany p o w e r - i n this case, the responsibility to view society as something more than a market.
THE M A R K E T I N G SOCIETY How powerful is marketing? By definition, marketing encompasses the activities of assessing public wants, tailoring and packaging a product, pricing and distributing it, and encouraging its purchase through various direct selling, advertising, and sales promotion techniques. Marketing, then, "covers all business activities necessary to effect transfers in ownership of goods and to provide for their physical distribution. It embraces the entire
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RICHARD H. BRIEN, BETSY D. GELB, AND WILLIAM D. TRAMMELL
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group of services and functions performed in the distribution of merchandise from producer to customers, excluding only operations relating to changes in the form of goods normally regarded as processing or manufacturing operations. ''~ So defined, marketing commands tremendous resources. Advertising, one of its major components, is a $20 billion industry. Primarily, this sum represents money spent directly to carry messages to the public: 70 percent of the total goes not for salaries to copywriters or fees to TV actors b u t to media-billboards, television, newspapers, radio, magazines, and store displays that constantly tell Americans what marketing wants them to learn. One message-"Buy more"-and 820 billion per year spent saying it: here is part of the leverage of marketing. Furthermore, when we call power the ability to get done what you want done, we can call marketing disproportionately powerful in comparison to other segments of society. Education, religion, public service, the a r t s - n o n e of these sectors repeats to the public a single consistent theme. Understandably, perhaps, they are less successful in terms of their own goals. Marketers may be unique among forces in contemporary American society in the degree to which they accomplish what they set out to do. Social scientists assess the power of marketing in somewhat different terms, b u t present equally strong evidence of its pervasiveness. Fromm, for example, associates a particular personality type with members of today's society; he calls it "the marketing character." F r o m m begins his analysis of the development of social and individual character orientations over time with "the receptive character . . . inadequate and helpless." These, he says, are fostered b y feudal societies. He
1. Theodore Beckman, Harold Maynard, and William Davidson, Principles of Marketing (6th ed.; New York: The Ronald Press, 1957), p. 4.
moves on to "the hoarding character," a product of the period of transition from feudalism to capitalism, and to "the exploitive c h a r a c t e r . . , basically hostile and manipulative," which he associates with the adventure capitalists of the nineteenth century. Then he discusses "the marketing character": ...a p r o d u c t o f m o d e r n s o c i e t y . . , the autom a t o n c o n f o r m i s t . In this n o n p r o d u c t i v e o r i e n t a t i o n , individual qualities have no intrinsic value. Personality is a c o m m o d i t y for sale; and there are f a s h i o n s m p e r s o n a l i t y j u s t as there are.in o t h e r c o m m o d i t i e s . Moreover, as m i g h t be e x p e c t e d , t h e r e is no genuineness or stability in h u m a n relationships. T h e classic e x a m p l e is the m y t h i c a l c h a r a c t e r o f Peer G y n t , w h o tries to f i n d h i m s e l f b e n e a t h layers o f superficial values only to f i n d t h a t he has n o inner core o f truth. 2
If this is the era of the marketing character and the United States is the nation where marketing has had its greatest success, we can call our society The Marketing Society. The roots of the term lie in anthropological analysis. Anthropologists have classified societies in their goods handling and goods receiving processes as reciprocative, redistributive, and marketing. Exchange sectors in reciprocative societies are least like modern marketing. For instance, goods are given away in Melanesia simply to gain prestige. A redistributive pattern is found in the Haitian marketplace, where farmers sell produce to traders, who in turn sell it to residents of the town. In either case, goods handling is personal and simple. Marketing societies, as anthropologists distinguish them, are far more complex. The United States, having moved furthest b e y o n d the simple goods-for-prestige, goods-forgoods, or goods-for-money trading mechanisms, is thus the world's most complete marketing society. Here, the exchange process takes on such nuances as quantity discounts, credit cards, multilevel distribution channels,
2. S. H. Nagter, "Erich Fromm" in A. M. Freedman and H. I. Kaplan (eds.), Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry (Baltimore: The Williams & Wilkins Co., 1967), p. 353.
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The Challenge to Marketing Dominance
perfumed newspaper pages, and computerselected market segmentation. These complexities demonstrate marketing's success: in the long term, a c o m p a n y or an e c o n o m y tolerates gimmicks only if they pay their way or become part of the value structure. Marketing's gimmicks have done both. For the marketing efforts of an individual firm, the pay-your-way criterion has been dollar volume of sales; for the nation, it has been growth in the gross national prgduct. Now, the evidence suggests, our society may be ready to challenge the power and productivity of marketing by applying broader and more rigorous performance measures.
CONSUMERISM: SOCIETY'S CHALLENGE What social scientists think is of theoretical interest, but what the public will act on may be viewed as a more realistic measure of power. Here too marketing is in the foreground; it is one of the major lightning rods being used by societal change agents to channel the growing energy of protest against a culture of bigness.
Too Many "Lemons" The protest referred to here is not that of irrationalism, militance, or evangelism. In its general form, this protest is an almost nostalgic banding together of everyday individuals with the implicit plea: "Let ordinary citizens be a kind of special interest group, tOO."
However, in its best publicized form, it fights not the stifling bureaucracy of city hall b u t an inexcusable proportion of "lemons" in the automobile industry. Ralph Nader has found in the corporate marketing effort the ideal dragon against which to rally "effective countervailing forces in behalf of normally unorganized citizens. ''3 The last refuge of 3. "Ralph Nader Becomes an Organization," Business Week (Nov. 28, 1970).
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middle-class America, the marketplace, seems to be failing. In a consumer culture, this constitutes an intolerable institutional breakdown, and the frustrated, angry response is consumerism. A fertile ground for Nader's probes, consumerism is b y definition "a social force within the environment designed to aid and protect the consumer b y exerting legal, moral, and economic pressure on business. ''4 This definition identifies the basic components and establishes the essential relationships of consumerism, b u t it fails to capture the degree to which the gap between buyer and seller frustrates those on the buying side. Nor does it reflect the corresponding degree of power disparity felt b y consumers. It was recently observed that the schism between seller and buyer is indeed everwidening, creating a communications gap that, in turn, leads directly to the discontent manifested as consumerism. The breadth of the gap and the grim seriousness of those on the consumer side were pragmatically described in a special Buszness Week feature. The analogy used was the old burlesque comedy routine about the cross between a parrot and a tiger that resulted in a species that no one could exactly define; however, when it spoke, everyone listened. "Whatever else consumerism is," the writer observed, "it's beginning to look like a tigerish sort of parrot, and business, it seems, would do well to listen."s Consumerism, then, is not just a new name for the same old tensions that have always existed in the exchange process. Nor does it appear to be a passing political fancy. The point that votes are often bloc-based and that almost everyone is a consumer has been lost on no one in political life, of course. Consumerism is good politics, but it is much, much more.
4. D. W. Cravens and G. E. Hills, "Consumerism: a Perspective for Business," Business Horizons (August, 1970), p. 24. 5. "Business Responds to Consumerism," Business Week (Sept. 6, 1969), p. 94.
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In its broadest sense, it can be associated with the distortion of the marketing concept. The marketing concept--widely hailed by responsible and progressive managers everywhere and taught in every respectable business school in the country--is a basically simple and certainly not an evil idea. The whole business process, it argues, begins by finding out what consumers want and need. From this need statement, the business system proceeds to design and produce products and services that appear to fulfill customers' desires in some advantageous or preferential manner, relative to the offerings of competitors. The product or output is priced reasonably, distributed widely, and promoted vigorously. Result: something pretty close to the classic economic maximization models for consumer utility and corporate profit. The problem is, as Peter Drucker, among others, has noted, that the process rests precariously on the assumptions (1) that consumers really know their needs; (2) that businesses really care about those needs and k n o w how to find out about them; (3) that businesses provide useful information in the marketplace that clearly distinguishes matching needs and products; and (4) that products and services really deliver what consumers expect and businesses promise. Blasting the application of the marketing concept, Drucker points out how tenuous m a n y of those assumptions may be: C o n s u m e r i s m m e a n s t h a t the c o n s u m e r l o o k s u p o n t h e m a n u f a c t u r e r as s o m e b o d y w h o is intere s t e d , b u t w h o really d o e s n ' t k n o w w h a t t h e c o n s u m e r ' s realities are. He regards t h e m a n u f a c t u r e r as s o m e b o d y w h o has n o t m a d e the e f f o r t to f i n d o u t , w h o d o e s n o t u n d e r s t a n d t h e w o r l d in w h i c h the c o n s u m e r lives, a n d w h o e x p e c t s the c o n s u m e r to b e able to m a k e d i s t i n c t i o n s w h i c h t h e c o n s u m e r is n e i t h e r able n o r willing to m a k e . 6
As a result, the consumer sector of the U.S. e c o n o m y may be at a point of critical mass, and consumerism may just be the
6. Peter Drucker, "The Shame of Marketing," Marketing (August, 1969), p. 60.
Communications
triggering action necessary to set it all off. Reports from Washington observe that the consumer movement may finally be overcoming the opposition and inertia that have occasionally slowed its progress. This conclusion is based on views held by major forces in the consumer field including representatives of industry, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Nixon Administration, the Democratic opposition in Congress, and the federal regulatory agencies. While Nader calls the consumer movement "incredibly new and small," the consensus of the experts seems to be that the question no longer is whether action will be taken, but how much and how fast. One of the most provocative proposals is a plan outlined by Senator Frank Moss (D-Utah). Chairman of the Senate's consumer subcommittee, Moss envisions a National Institute of Marketing and Society as part of the U.S. Public Health Service or the National Science Foundation. NIMS would be charged broadly to study the impact of marketing on American society; to analyze specific marketing themes and techniques, and behavioral problems; and to make broad studies of fundamental conflicts in the consumer culture which we now barely comprehend.
Sociological Effects Two sociologists substantiate Moss' implication that almost from birth Americans define their progress in terms of criteria borrowed from the marketplace. Bredemeier and Toby suggest that m a n y in the United States have actually made a religion of "things." Needing something to believe in, but lacking faith in the traditional divinities, they have undertaken to worship material goods. The drive to acquire tangible goods and services has become their primary goal in life. Since such a goal is inherently distributive or economic, Bredemeier and Toby look next at the principles on which the distribution of
BUSINESS HORIZONS
The Challenge to Marketing Dominance
"Only now, as marketing begins to assume responsibilities beyond skillful selling, do we realize the narrowness of most of its past efforts in the consumer field."
resources and rewards is based: "The principle followed b y most Americans in attempting to obtain material rewards is self-reliance. Y o u are expected to fend for yourself, to eschew the assistance of others, in the pursuit of the symbols of s u c c e s s - i n short, to 'shop around."'7 A distributive problem encountered in any society is that of deciding who shall perform what functions and control what resources. In the United States, such decisions are made according to the principle of competition. Thus it is not enough to want to be president of General Motors or to operate a successful drug store; y o u must exhibit various qualities which, in the eyes of certain and enough others, demonstrate y o u r capability and worth for such a position b e y o n d all other candidates. Moreover, y o u must continue to compete to keep what y o u have won. A final need for the society being described here is for terms of exchange, according to which material benefits are transferred among its members. The terms observed are those of negotiated exchange, which implies a mutual expectation on the part of each negotiator that the other is going to give him as little as he can for as much as possible. These four societal characteristicsmaterialism, self-reliance, competition, and negotiated e x c h a n g e - d e s c r i b e a scene in which the contemporary individual, as F r o m m views him, would feel right at home. It appears that our society has learned, perhaps t o o well, the lesson the marketer is
7. H. C. Bredemeier and Jackson Toby, Social Problems in America (New York: J o h n Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1966), p. 142.
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teaching: what is important is to b u y and to sell. As F r o m m writes: T h e m a r k e t c o n c e p t o f v a l u e . . , has led to a similar c o n c e p t of p e o p l e a n d p a r t i c u l a r l y o f oneself. T h e c h a r a c t e r o r i e n t a t i o n w h i c h is r o o t e d in t h e e x p e r i e n c e o f oneself as a c o m m o d i t y a n d of o n e ' s value as e x c h a n g e value I call t h e m a r k e t i n g orientation. In o u r t i m e t h e m a r k e t i n g o r i e n t a t i o n has b e e n g r o w i n g r a p i d l y , t o g e t h e r w i t h the d e v e l o p m e n t o f a n e w m a r k e t t h a t is a p h e n o m e n o n o f the last d e c a d e s - - t h e ' p e r s o n a l i t y m a r k e t . ' Clerks and salesm e n , b u s i n e s s executives a n d d o c t o r s , lawyers, a n d artists all a p p e a r o n this m a r k e t . It is t r u e t h a t t h e i r legal s t a t u s a n d e c o n o m i c p o s i t i o n s are d i f f e r e n t : some are i n d e p e n d e n t , charging for t h e i r services; o t h e r s are e m p l o y e d , receiving salaries. B u t all are d e p e n d e n t f o r t h e i r m a t e r i a l success o n a p e r s o n a l a c c e p t a n c e b y t h o s e w h o n e e d t h e i r services or t h o s e who employ them. 8
THE M A R K E T I N G RESPONSE The Uses of Power Only now, as marketing begins to assume responsibilities b e y o n d skillful selling, do we realize the narrowness of most of its past efforts in the consumer field. For example, while industrial marketers have for years prepared specifications of what their products could do under various circumstances and how they could be used with maximum safety, such information is only starting to trickle out to the general public. A paradoxical s y m p t o m of h o w rarely this informative marketing has been attempted is the initial rejection of some of the safer, more rational product features that have been offered. Why the rejection? In the classic cases over the years--S2 safety releases on wringer-type washing machines or safety belts in c a r s - t h e answer appears to be added cost. When the public is uninformed about existing threats from what they b u y and is forced to make decisions among hundreds of products,
8. S. H. Nagler, Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry.
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it is not surprising that t h e y grasp at cost, one basic m e t h o d of comparison, and hold onto it tightly while their purchased machines spin out of control. With the threat of government intervention, however, marketers are beginning to offer more facts. Simultaneously, they have reexamined the thrust of their attempts to persuade. Newspaper ads b y Bank of America decrying violence or by the Coca Cola Company decrying littering are recognizable developments of the 1970's. Marketing and public affairs merge into what two marketing authorities have called "furthering," the advancing of causes, not just profits. 9 Clearly, there need be no contradiction. The more disapproval generated for bank burning, the lower the insurance rates for bank branches in college towns. The less cluttering of the landscape with throwaway soft-drink cans, the less likelihood of legislation banning them. Here are two examples of American corporations that have " m a r k e t e d " something nonmaterial in addition to, not instead of, their primary service or product. However, additions of this kind to marketing are only half the issue. The other half of the responsible use of power involves restraint in its use. For example, a doctor who is a drug expert urges his colleagues to oppose legalizing marijuana although "the problem is not moderate use of the drug by stable individuals." Rather, says Dr. Joseph H. Davis, chief medical examiner for Dade County, Fla., "Americans have demonstrated that they can't act in moderation. The same thing would happen with marijuana that happened with alcohol and cigarettes. When they're legalized, they're commercialized. Everyone is told they have to take it. ''10 It is difficult to challenge Davis' assertion
9. S . J . Levy and Philip Kotler, "Beyond Marketing: the Furthering Concept," California Management Review (Winter, 1969), p. 70. 10. "Legal Marijuana Would Bring Abuse, Doctor Says," Houston Chronicle, Feb. 12, 1970, p. 24.
that the marketing society would be offered legalized marijuana with the same zest it has been offered headache powders or air travel: "Feel better fast, and have a wonderful trip." The question remains-is this trip necessary? Must the world's most advanced form of a goods-to-consumer system be an indiscriminate customer-producer? Or has marketing developed skills and tools that it can apply selectively without losing its ability to function? No one is expected to assume responsibility b e y o n d the scope of his power, whether we speak of an individual or a corporate bureaucracy or a whole sector of society. Marketing's initial assignment was to make the e c o n o m y grow when such a task was assumed to be the limit of what it could accomplish. Now, however, we are beginning to see the extent of its capabilities. In Eels' and Walton's words: If we c o n c e d e t h a t t h e r e is a n a c c o u n t a b i l i t y t h a t goes w i t h . . , p o w e r , t h e n t h e logic o f r e s p o n s i b i l i t y f o r those w h o h o l d it is easy to establish. T h e c o r p o r a t i o n is a c e n t e r o f w e a l t h a n d p o w e r , a n d it has, t h e r e f o r e , r e s p o n s i b i l i t i e s to t h o s e m o s t d e p e n d e n t o n i t . . . its s t o c k h o l d e r s , its e m p l o y e e s , a n d its c u s t o m e r s . B u t its e m p l o y e e s , its c u s t o m e r s , a n d its s t o c k h o l d e r s are also t h e c o m m u n i t y . T h e r e f o r e , it has a social as well as a n e c o n o m i c r e s p o n s i b i l i t y . 11
The Measure of Responsibility We feel justified in holding marketing accountable and responsible. Knowing that marketing men, as much as production specialists, shape the designs of our automobiles, we expect these designs to minimize pollution, accidents, and repairs. Knowing that the yearning of marketers for a mass audience shapes the content of our television dramas, we expect a better choice than among "shoot-'em-ups" A, B, and C. Knowing the power of marketers en masse, we expect an honest use of the
11. Richard Eels and Clarence Walton, Conceptual Foundations of Business (Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1961), p. 458.
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The Challenge to Marketing Dominance
" C a n we . . . e x p e c t m o r e t h a n ads r e m i n d i n g us to pick up s o f t - d r i n k containers? We can if we hold m a r k e t i n g responsible to t h e e x t e n t of its p o w e r . . . .
marketing concept. If it turns out that few housewives want the gold-plated thimbles that the manufacturer had planned to sell, we are not surprised. Why not low-cost, gadget-free sewing machines as the subject of the new promotional campaign? Carrying responsibility further, w h y not low cost lessons in poverty target areas on h o w to use the sewing machines to remodel second-hand clothes as well as to create new ones? Does the industry k n o w h o w many children are never sent to school because mother or child is too ashamed of the 6-year-old's clothes? Isn't that an area for "market research"? Marketing-in the broadest s e n s e - c a n tell the mother t o o poor to b u y even the simplest sewing machine where she can apply for free donated clothing. It can solicit that clothing from the affluent. It can convince a 6-year-old's classmates and teacher that his clothes are no disgrace, and even convince the 6-year-old himself. It can sell one sewing machine to a cooperative of ghetto mothers that it helped to organize. Obviously, we are talking here a b o u t only one example; it can be multiplied b y a thousand. That kind of marketing is a beginning. On the horizon is man b e y o n d Fromm's marketing c h a r a c t e r - m a n w h o m F r o m m foresees as " p r o d u c t i v e . . . able to reason indep e n d e n t l y . . , and to l o v e . . , a spontaneous, integrated self." Where will he come from? "It has been suggested," notes one writer, "that the next competitive frontier facing business is an inner one. It is the market of the mind and the personal development of consumers. ,,l 2 This inner frontier we include among the 12. William
Lazer,
"Competition,
Innovation,
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areas for which marketing shares responsibility with education, religion, the family, and government-all of our social institutions. If the principal values Americans hold are indeed those of materialism, excessive selfreliance, competition, and negotiated exchange, we can look at our power blocs and single out marketing as the one most likely to have produced precisely this combination. The outer frontier is the environment, exploited b y a nation holding the values just listed. Industrial or auto pollution, applause for population growth, the depletion of natural resources-all of which threaten the survival of h u m a n i t y - a r e not intentionally malevolent acts b u t are unthinking behavior that proceeds from competition and materialism in particular. Business leaders have asked, "Can marketing be expected to modify the value structure as well as the behavior which flows from it?" Can we, in other words, expect more than ads reminding us to pick up soft-drink containers? We can if we hold marketing responsible to the extent of its p o w e r - p o w e r which has told every television viewer that more consumption equals virtue. We are not ignoring Theodore Levitt's argument, when he sees in a business devoted to anything besides profit the specter of "a new feudalism," with the corporation investing itself "with all-embracing duties, obligations, and finally powers-ministering to the whole man and molding him and society into the image of the corporation's narrow ambitions and its essentially antisocial needs.,,13 Levitt has seen as a future possibility what we are seeing as present reality. He is afraid that business will take social responsi-
and
Marketing Management," in Meloan and Whitlo (eds.), Competition in Marketing (Los Angeles: Southern California, 1964), p. 15.
"'
University of
13. Theodore Levitt, "Dangers of Social Responsibility," Harvard Business Review, XXXVI (September-October, 1958), p. 44.
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RICHARD H. BRIEN, BETSY D. GELB, AND WILLIAM D. TRAMMELL
bility as an e x c u s e to s h a p e w h a t we say business is a l r e a d y s h a p i n g t h r o u g h m a r k e t i n g . If m a r k e t i n g is a l r e a d y king, we argue, w h a t can it b e c o m e e x c e p t a b e t t e r or w o r s e king?
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We can, t h e n , e x p e c t m a r k e t i n g to exercise its p o w e r r e s p o n s i b l y in t w o arenas, the business s e c t o r a n d the i n s t i t u t i o n a l s e c t o r o u t s i d e it. Within the business sector, the n e e d is for r e s t r a i n t in the m a r k e t i n g o f trivia a n d for a s h a r p e r focus o n p r o d u c t q u a l i t y and s a f e t y . In a d d i t i o n , a m e l d i n g of m a r k e t i n g and p u b l i c affairs is a n e c e s s i t y , w h a t e v e r the c o m b i n a t i o n w h i c h emerges m a y b e called. Such a m e l d implies r e c o g n i t i o n t h a t the p r o d u c t i v e m a n , as F r o m m e n v i s i o n e d h i m , is a m o r e desirable c u s t o m e r in the long run t h a n the a u t o m a t o n c o n f o r m i s t - a n d c e r t a i n l y a m o r e desirable friend, n e i g h b o r , a n d fellow citizen. O u t s i d e the business sector, m a r k e t i n g can a p p r o a c h e d u c a t i o n , religion, g o v e r n m e n t , and the arts to o f f e r a set o f useful tools,
r a t h e r t h a n to i m p o s e its value s y s t e m . W h a t a m a r k e t e r k n o w s a b o u t visual a t t e n t i o n spans has a l r e a d y b e e n a d a p t e d to bring the lessons o f " S e s a m e S t r e e t " to p r e s c h o o l y o u n g s t e r s . W h a t the m a r k e t e r k n o w s a b o u t mass m e d i a can also help a c o n s c i e n t i o u s g o v e r n m e n t official p r o m o t e r e s o u r c e c o n s e r v a t i o n . T h e m a r k e t i n g e x p e r t can b e useful in m a n y areas b e c a u s e his m e t h o d s are t h o s e o f s e t t i n g and m e e t i n g goals, r e s p o n d i n g to change, and helping to m a n a g e such change. Surely he can do m o r e f o r a u n i v e r s i t y t h a n selling the merits of its f o o t b a l l t e a m a n d m o r e f o r g o v e r n m e n t t h a n t u r n i n g c h a r i s m a t i c candidates into e l e c t e d officials. We believe t h a t c o r p o r a t e leaders at the highest level are b e g i n n i n g to u n d e r s t a n d ,,chat t h e y can a c c o m p l i s h w i t h m a r k e t i n g . N o w t h e y need to see the h o l l o w n e s s o f the a r g u m e n t t h a t if t h e y use their p o w e r to do m o r e t h a n sell goods, t h e y will be c a r r y i n g business b e y o n d business limits. T h e p o w e r o f m a r k e t i n g carried t h e m b e y o n d t h o s e limits years ago; the q u e s t i o n n o w is w h e t h e r m a r k e t i n g recognizes its o b l i g a t i o n s to the s o c i e t y it a l r e a d y p e r v a d e s .
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CALL FOR PAPERS Business Horizons is edited primarily for the responsible and intelligent executive who must know not only how to make effective decisions today, but also how to anticipate those that will be necessary tomorrow. The place of this bimonthly in the field of business publications lies between the business news magazine and the technical journal. In Business Horizons the aim is to relate significant subjects to the lives and careers of business managers. Because many of the readers of Business Horizons are time-pressed executives who want their reading matter clear and concise, we advise prospective authors against a formal, academic approach to their material. The editors also wish to point out that material of a highly specialized or technical nature should find its place in a more appropriate journal. The typical article for Business Horizons should run from 3,000 to 4,500 words or 10 to 15 t3/pewritten pages, elite type. All tables, charts, and illustrations should accompany the manuscript and carry complete source notes. Footnotes should be complete. Two copies of the manuscript should be submitted: one original on bond paper and one carbon copy. Submit papers to Editor, Business Horizons, School of Business, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47401. OOODOODODODOOOOOOOOODOOODDOI3~3OOOOODOODC~3ODOODDDODDOOOODOQDDOOODDDDOODDOODDO
BUSINESS HORIZONS
THE CHALLENGE TO MARKETING DOMINANCE Will social responsibility be recognized? Rzchard H. Brien ~s corporate group vice-presidet~t f o r marketing at Dart Industries, Inc., Los Angeles; Betsy D. Gelb is a faculty m e m b e r at the University o f Houston; and William D. Trammell is wzth the Fluor Corporation, Los Angeles.
Marketing has had its greatest success in the United S t a t e s - t h e Marketing Society. This function commands tremendous resources and is disproportionately powerful in comparison to other segments o f society. This dominance is now challenged by consumerism. I f marketing is to act responsibly, it must offer informative marketing and adopt restraint zn the use o f its power. The authors list several examples that would demonstrate marketing's accountability and responsibility. In the business sector, it can focus less on trivia and more on produc[ quality and safety; outside the business sector, it can approach education, religion, government, and the arts to offer a set o f useful tools. The corporation's public affairs executive assures the luncheon clubs that his company knows time have changed. The c o m p a n y
FEBRUARY, 1972
president echoes the theme before financial analysts: business must act responsibly. The luncheon club audience and the stockbrokers may nod approvingly, but they are listening to the wrong men. Back at the office, those who shape the company's marketing effort are determining the real level of the corporation's social responsibility. And too often all that American society hears from them is a succinct b u t endlessly repeated message: "Buy more!" Social responsibility activists seem to think there are several significant flaws in the narrowness of that message, and ha~;e made the marketing function their primary corporate target. The purpose of this article is to examine the extent of marketing's power, the use of that power, and what it implies. We contend that marketing is the preeminent social force today in the United States to such an extent that the nation may accurately be called The Marketing Society. Further, we assert that marketing's dominance obligates it to assume the responsibility that always must accompany p o w e r - i n this case, the responsibility to view society as something more than a market.
THE M A R K E T I N G SOCIETY How powerful is marketing? By definition, marketing encompasses the activities of assessing public wants, tailoring and packaging a product, pricing and distributing it, and encouraging its purchase through various direct selling, advertising, and sales promotion techniques. Marketing, then, "covers all business activities necessary to effect transfers in ownership of goods and to provide for their physical distribution. It embraces the entire
23
RICHARD H. BRIEN, BETSY D. GELB, AND WILLIAM D. TRAMMELL
24
group of services and functions performed in the distribution of merchandise from producer to customers, excluding only operations relating to changes in the form of goods normally regarded as processing or manufacturing operations. ''~ So defined, marketing commands tremendous resources. Advertising, one of its major components, is a $20 billion industry. Primarily, this sum represents money spent directly to carry messages to the public: 70 percent of the total goes not for salaries to copywriters or fees to TV actors b u t to media-billboards, television, newspapers, radio, magazines, and store displays that constantly tell Americans what marketing wants them to learn. One message-"Buy more"-and 820 billion per year spent saying it: here is part of the leverage of marketing. Furthermore, when we call power the ability to get done what you want done, we can call marketing disproportionately powerful in comparison to other segments of society. Education, religion, public service, the a r t s - n o n e of these sectors repeats to the public a single consistent theme. Understandably, perhaps, they are less successful in terms of their own goals. Marketers may be unique among forces in contemporary American society in the degree to which they accomplish what they set out to do. Social scientists assess the power of marketing in somewhat different terms, b u t present equally strong evidence of its pervasiveness. Fromm, for example, associates a particular personality type with members of today's society; he calls it "the marketing character." F r o m m begins his analysis of the development of social and individual character orientations over time with "the receptive character . . . inadequate and helpless." These, he says, are fostered b y feudal societies. He
1. Theodore Beckman, Harold Maynard, and William Davidson, Principles of Marketing (6th ed.; New York: The Ronald Press, 1957), p. 4.
moves on to "the hoarding character," a product of the period of transition from feudalism to capitalism, and to "the exploitive c h a r a c t e r . . , basically hostile and manipulative," which he associates with the adventure capitalists of the nineteenth century. Then he discusses "the marketing character": ...a p r o d u c t o f m o d e r n s o c i e t y . . , the autom a t o n c o n f o r m i s t . In this n o n p r o d u c t i v e o r i e n t a t i o n , individual qualities have no intrinsic value. Personality is a c o m m o d i t y for sale; and there are f a s h i o n s m p e r s o n a l i t y j u s t as there are.in o t h e r c o m m o d i t i e s . Moreover, as m i g h t be e x p e c t e d , t h e r e is no genuineness or stability in h u m a n relationships. T h e classic e x a m p l e is the m y t h i c a l c h a r a c t e r o f Peer G y n t , w h o tries to f i n d h i m s e l f b e n e a t h layers o f superficial values only to f i n d t h a t he has n o inner core o f truth. 2
If this is the era of the marketing character and the United States is the nation where marketing has had its greatest success, we can call our society The Marketing Society. The roots of the term lie in anthropological analysis. Anthropologists have classified societies in their goods handling and goods receiving processes as reciprocative, redistributive, and marketing. Exchange sectors in reciprocative societies are least like modern marketing. For instance, goods are given away in Melanesia simply to gain prestige. A redistributive pattern is found in the Haitian marketplace, where farmers sell produce to traders, who in turn sell it to residents of the town. In either case, goods handling is personal and simple. Marketing societies, as anthropologists distinguish them, are far more complex. The United States, having moved furthest b e y o n d the simple goods-for-prestige, goods-forgoods, or goods-for-money trading mechanisms, is thus the world's most complete marketing society. Here, the exchange process takes on such nuances as quantity discounts, credit cards, multilevel distribution channels,
2. S. H. Nagter, "Erich Fromm" in A. M. Freedman and H. I. Kaplan (eds.), Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry (Baltimore: The Williams & Wilkins Co., 1967), p. 353.
BUSINESS HORIZONS
The Challenge to Marketing Dominance
perfumed newspaper pages, and computerselected market segmentation. These complexities demonstrate marketing's success: in the long term, a c o m p a n y or an e c o n o m y tolerates gimmicks only if they pay their way or become part of the value structure. Marketing's gimmicks have done both. For the marketing efforts of an individual firm, the pay-your-way criterion has been dollar volume of sales; for the nation, it has been growth in the gross national prgduct. Now, the evidence suggests, our society may be ready to challenge the power and productivity of marketing by applying broader and more rigorous performance measures.
CONSUMERISM: SOCIETY'S CHALLENGE What social scientists think is of theoretical interest, but what the public will act on may be viewed as a more realistic measure of power. Here too marketing is in the foreground; it is one of the major lightning rods being used by societal change agents to channel the growing energy of protest against a culture of bigness.
Too Many "Lemons" The protest referred to here is not that of irrationalism, militance, or evangelism. In its general form, this protest is an almost nostalgic banding together of everyday individuals with the implicit plea: "Let ordinary citizens be a kind of special interest group, tOO."
However, in its best publicized form, it fights not the stifling bureaucracy of city hall b u t an inexcusable proportion of "lemons" in the automobile industry. Ralph Nader has found in the corporate marketing effort the ideal dragon against which to rally "effective countervailing forces in behalf of normally unorganized citizens. ''3 The last refuge of 3. "Ralph Nader Becomes an Organization," Business Week (Nov. 28, 1970).
FEBRUARY, 1972
middle-class America, the marketplace, seems to be failing. In a consumer culture, this constitutes an intolerable institutional breakdown, and the frustrated, angry response is consumerism. A fertile ground for Nader's probes, consumerism is b y definition "a social force within the environment designed to aid and protect the consumer b y exerting legal, moral, and economic pressure on business. ''4 This definition identifies the basic components and establishes the essential relationships of consumerism, b u t it fails to capture the degree to which the gap between buyer and seller frustrates those on the buying side. Nor does it reflect the corresponding degree of power disparity felt b y consumers. It was recently observed that the schism between seller and buyer is indeed everwidening, creating a communications gap that, in turn, leads directly to the discontent manifested as consumerism. The breadth of the gap and the grim seriousness of those on the consumer side were pragmatically described in a special Buszness Week feature. The analogy used was the old burlesque comedy routine about the cross between a parrot and a tiger that resulted in a species that no one could exactly define; however, when it spoke, everyone listened. "Whatever else consumerism is," the writer observed, "it's beginning to look like a tigerish sort of parrot, and business, it seems, would do well to listen."s Consumerism, then, is not just a new name for the same old tensions that have always existed in the exchange process. Nor does it appear to be a passing political fancy. The point that votes are often bloc-based and that almost everyone is a consumer has been lost on no one in political life, of course. Consumerism is good politics, but it is much, much more.
4. D. W. Cravens and G. E. Hills, "Consumerism: a Perspective for Business," Business Horizons (August, 1970), p. 24. 5. "Business Responds to Consumerism," Business Week (Sept. 6, 1969), p. 94.
25
RICHARD H. BRIEN, BETSY D. GELB, AND WILLIAM D. TRAMMELL
26
In its broadest sense, it can be associated with the distortion of the marketing concept. The marketing concept--widely hailed by responsible and progressive managers everywhere and taught in every respectable business school in the country--is a basically simple and certainly not an evil idea. The whole business process, it argues, begins by finding out what consumers want and need. From this need statement, the business system proceeds to design and produce products and services that appear to fulfill customers' desires in some advantageous or preferential manner, relative to the offerings of competitors. The product or output is priced reasonably, distributed widely, and promoted vigorously. Result: something pretty close to the classic economic maximization models for consumer utility and corporate profit. The problem is, as Peter Drucker, among others, has noted, that the process rests precariously on the assumptions (1) that consumers really know their needs; (2) that businesses really care about those needs and k n o w how to find out about them; (3) that businesses provide useful information in the marketplace that clearly distinguishes matching needs and products; and (4) that products and services really deliver what consumers expect and businesses promise. Blasting the application of the marketing concept, Drucker points out how tenuous m a n y of those assumptions may be: C o n s u m e r i s m m e a n s t h a t the c o n s u m e r l o o k s u p o n t h e m a n u f a c t u r e r as s o m e b o d y w h o is intere s t e d , b u t w h o really d o e s n ' t k n o w w h a t t h e c o n s u m e r ' s realities are. He regards t h e m a n u f a c t u r e r as s o m e b o d y w h o has n o t m a d e the e f f o r t to f i n d o u t , w h o d o e s n o t u n d e r s t a n d t h e w o r l d in w h i c h the c o n s u m e r lives, a n d w h o e x p e c t s the c o n s u m e r to b e able to m a k e d i s t i n c t i o n s w h i c h t h e c o n s u m e r is n e i t h e r able n o r willing to m a k e . 6
As a result, the consumer sector of the U.S. e c o n o m y may be at a point of critical mass, and consumerism may just be the
6. Peter Drucker, "The Shame of Marketing," Marketing (August, 1969), p. 60.
Communications
triggering action necessary to set it all off. Reports from Washington observe that the consumer movement may finally be overcoming the opposition and inertia that have occasionally slowed its progress. This conclusion is based on views held by major forces in the consumer field including representatives of industry, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Nixon Administration, the Democratic opposition in Congress, and the federal regulatory agencies. While Nader calls the consumer movement "incredibly new and small," the consensus of the experts seems to be that the question no longer is whether action will be taken, but how much and how fast. One of the most provocative proposals is a plan outlined by Senator Frank Moss (D-Utah). Chairman of the Senate's consumer subcommittee, Moss envisions a National Institute of Marketing and Society as part of the U.S. Public Health Service or the National Science Foundation. NIMS would be charged broadly to study the impact of marketing on American society; to analyze specific marketing themes and techniques, and behavioral problems; and to make broad studies of fundamental conflicts in the consumer culture which we now barely comprehend.
Sociological Effects Two sociologists substantiate Moss' implication that almost from birth Americans define their progress in terms of criteria borrowed from the marketplace. Bredemeier and Toby suggest that m a n y in the United States have actually made a religion of "things." Needing something to believe in, but lacking faith in the traditional divinities, they have undertaken to worship material goods. The drive to acquire tangible goods and services has become their primary goal in life. Since such a goal is inherently distributive or economic, Bredemeier and Toby look next at the principles on which the distribution of
BUSINESS HORIZONS
The Challenge to Marketing Dominance
"Only now, as marketing begins to assume responsibilities beyond skillful selling, do we realize the narrowness of most of its past efforts in the consumer field."
resources and rewards is based: "The principle followed b y most Americans in attempting to obtain material rewards is self-reliance. Y o u are expected to fend for yourself, to eschew the assistance of others, in the pursuit of the symbols of s u c c e s s - i n short, to 'shop around."'7 A distributive problem encountered in any society is that of deciding who shall perform what functions and control what resources. In the United States, such decisions are made according to the principle of competition. Thus it is not enough to want to be president of General Motors or to operate a successful drug store; y o u must exhibit various qualities which, in the eyes of certain and enough others, demonstrate y o u r capability and worth for such a position b e y o n d all other candidates. Moreover, y o u must continue to compete to keep what y o u have won. A final need for the society being described here is for terms of exchange, according to which material benefits are transferred among its members. The terms observed are those of negotiated exchange, which implies a mutual expectation on the part of each negotiator that the other is going to give him as little as he can for as much as possible. These four societal characteristicsmaterialism, self-reliance, competition, and negotiated e x c h a n g e - d e s c r i b e a scene in which the contemporary individual, as F r o m m views him, would feel right at home. It appears that our society has learned, perhaps t o o well, the lesson the marketer is
7. H. C. Bredemeier and Jackson Toby, Social Problems in America (New York: J o h n Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1966), p. 142.
FEBRUARY, 1972
teaching: what is important is to b u y and to sell. As F r o m m writes: T h e m a r k e t c o n c e p t o f v a l u e . . , has led to a similar c o n c e p t of p e o p l e a n d p a r t i c u l a r l y o f oneself. T h e c h a r a c t e r o r i e n t a t i o n w h i c h is r o o t e d in t h e e x p e r i e n c e o f oneself as a c o m m o d i t y a n d of o n e ' s value as e x c h a n g e value I call t h e m a r k e t i n g orientation. In o u r t i m e t h e m a r k e t i n g o r i e n t a t i o n has b e e n g r o w i n g r a p i d l y , t o g e t h e r w i t h the d e v e l o p m e n t o f a n e w m a r k e t t h a t is a p h e n o m e n o n o f the last d e c a d e s - - t h e ' p e r s o n a l i t y m a r k e t . ' Clerks and salesm e n , b u s i n e s s executives a n d d o c t o r s , lawyers, a n d artists all a p p e a r o n this m a r k e t . It is t r u e t h a t t h e i r legal s t a t u s a n d e c o n o m i c p o s i t i o n s are d i f f e r e n t : some are i n d e p e n d e n t , charging for t h e i r services; o t h e r s are e m p l o y e d , receiving salaries. B u t all are d e p e n d e n t f o r t h e i r m a t e r i a l success o n a p e r s o n a l a c c e p t a n c e b y t h o s e w h o n e e d t h e i r services or t h o s e who employ them. 8
THE M A R K E T I N G RESPONSE The Uses of Power Only now, as marketing begins to assume responsibilities b e y o n d skillful selling, do we realize the narrowness of most of its past efforts in the consumer field. For example, while industrial marketers have for years prepared specifications of what their products could do under various circumstances and how they could be used with maximum safety, such information is only starting to trickle out to the general public. A paradoxical s y m p t o m of h o w rarely this informative marketing has been attempted is the initial rejection of some of the safer, more rational product features that have been offered. Why the rejection? In the classic cases over the years--S2 safety releases on wringer-type washing machines or safety belts in c a r s - t h e answer appears to be added cost. When the public is uninformed about existing threats from what they b u y and is forced to make decisions among hundreds of products,
8. S. H. Nagler, Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry.
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RICHARD H. BRIEN, BETSY D. GELB, AND WILLIAM D. TRAMMELL
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it is not surprising that t h e y grasp at cost, one basic m e t h o d of comparison, and hold onto it tightly while their purchased machines spin out of control. With the threat of government intervention, however, marketers are beginning to offer more facts. Simultaneously, they have reexamined the thrust of their attempts to persuade. Newspaper ads b y Bank of America decrying violence or by the Coca Cola Company decrying littering are recognizable developments of the 1970's. Marketing and public affairs merge into what two marketing authorities have called "furthering," the advancing of causes, not just profits. 9 Clearly, there need be no contradiction. The more disapproval generated for bank burning, the lower the insurance rates for bank branches in college towns. The less cluttering of the landscape with throwaway soft-drink cans, the less likelihood of legislation banning them. Here are two examples of American corporations that have " m a r k e t e d " something nonmaterial in addition to, not instead of, their primary service or product. However, additions of this kind to marketing are only half the issue. The other half of the responsible use of power involves restraint in its use. For example, a doctor who is a drug expert urges his colleagues to oppose legalizing marijuana although "the problem is not moderate use of the drug by stable individuals." Rather, says Dr. Joseph H. Davis, chief medical examiner for Dade County, Fla., "Americans have demonstrated that they can't act in moderation. The same thing would happen with marijuana that happened with alcohol and cigarettes. When they're legalized, they're commercialized. Everyone is told they have to take it. ''10 It is difficult to challenge Davis' assertion
9. S . J . Levy and Philip Kotler, "Beyond Marketing: the Furthering Concept," California Management Review (Winter, 1969), p. 70. 10. "Legal Marijuana Would Bring Abuse, Doctor Says," Houston Chronicle, Feb. 12, 1970, p. 24.
that the marketing society would be offered legalized marijuana with the same zest it has been offered headache powders or air travel: "Feel better fast, and have a wonderful trip." The question remains-is this trip necessary? Must the world's most advanced form of a goods-to-consumer system be an indiscriminate customer-producer? Or has marketing developed skills and tools that it can apply selectively without losing its ability to function? No one is expected to assume responsibility b e y o n d the scope of his power, whether we speak of an individual or a corporate bureaucracy or a whole sector of society. Marketing's initial assignment was to make the e c o n o m y grow when such a task was assumed to be the limit of what it could accomplish. Now, however, we are beginning to see the extent of its capabilities. In Eels' and Walton's words: If we c o n c e d e t h a t t h e r e is a n a c c o u n t a b i l i t y t h a t goes w i t h . . , p o w e r , t h e n t h e logic o f r e s p o n s i b i l i t y f o r those w h o h o l d it is easy to establish. T h e c o r p o r a t i o n is a c e n t e r o f w e a l t h a n d p o w e r , a n d it has, t h e r e f o r e , r e s p o n s i b i l i t i e s to t h o s e m o s t d e p e n d e n t o n i t . . . its s t o c k h o l d e r s , its e m p l o y e e s , a n d its c u s t o m e r s . B u t its e m p l o y e e s , its c u s t o m e r s , a n d its s t o c k h o l d e r s are also t h e c o m m u n i t y . T h e r e f o r e , it has a social as well as a n e c o n o m i c r e s p o n s i b i l i t y . 11
The Measure of Responsibility We feel justified in holding marketing accountable and responsible. Knowing that marketing men, as much as production specialists, shape the designs of our automobiles, we expect these designs to minimize pollution, accidents, and repairs. Knowing that the yearning of marketers for a mass audience shapes the content of our television dramas, we expect a better choice than among "shoot-'em-ups" A, B, and C. Knowing the power of marketers en masse, we expect an honest use of the
11. Richard Eels and Clarence Walton, Conceptual Foundations of Business (Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1961), p. 458.
BUSINESS HORIZONS
The Challenge to Marketing Dominance
" C a n we . . . e x p e c t m o r e t h a n ads r e m i n d i n g us to pick up s o f t - d r i n k containers? We can if we hold m a r k e t i n g responsible to t h e e x t e n t of its p o w e r . . . .
marketing concept. If it turns out that few housewives want the gold-plated thimbles that the manufacturer had planned to sell, we are not surprised. Why not low-cost, gadget-free sewing machines as the subject of the new promotional campaign? Carrying responsibility further, w h y not low cost lessons in poverty target areas on h o w to use the sewing machines to remodel second-hand clothes as well as to create new ones? Does the industry k n o w h o w many children are never sent to school because mother or child is too ashamed of the 6-year-old's clothes? Isn't that an area for "market research"? Marketing-in the broadest s e n s e - c a n tell the mother t o o poor to b u y even the simplest sewing machine where she can apply for free donated clothing. It can solicit that clothing from the affluent. It can convince a 6-year-old's classmates and teacher that his clothes are no disgrace, and even convince the 6-year-old himself. It can sell one sewing machine to a cooperative of ghetto mothers that it helped to organize. Obviously, we are talking here a b o u t only one example; it can be multiplied b y a thousand. That kind of marketing is a beginning. On the horizon is man b e y o n d Fromm's marketing c h a r a c t e r - m a n w h o m F r o m m foresees as " p r o d u c t i v e . . . able to reason indep e n d e n t l y . . , and to l o v e . . , a spontaneous, integrated self." Where will he come from? "It has been suggested," notes one writer, "that the next competitive frontier facing business is an inner one. It is the market of the mind and the personal development of consumers. ,,l 2 This inner frontier we include among the 12. William
Lazer,
"Competition,
Innovation,
FEBRUARY, 1972
areas for which marketing shares responsibility with education, religion, the family, and government-all of our social institutions. If the principal values Americans hold are indeed those of materialism, excessive selfreliance, competition, and negotiated exchange, we can look at our power blocs and single out marketing as the one most likely to have produced precisely this combination. The outer frontier is the environment, exploited b y a nation holding the values just listed. Industrial or auto pollution, applause for population growth, the depletion of natural resources-all of which threaten the survival of h u m a n i t y - a r e not intentionally malevolent acts b u t are unthinking behavior that proceeds from competition and materialism in particular. Business leaders have asked, "Can marketing be expected to modify the value structure as well as the behavior which flows from it?" Can we, in other words, expect more than ads reminding us to pick up soft-drink containers? We can if we hold marketing responsible to the extent of its p o w e r - p o w e r which has told every television viewer that more consumption equals virtue. We are not ignoring Theodore Levitt's argument, when he sees in a business devoted to anything besides profit the specter of "a new feudalism," with the corporation investing itself "with all-embracing duties, obligations, and finally powers-ministering to the whole man and molding him and society into the image of the corporation's narrow ambitions and its essentially antisocial needs.,,13 Levitt has seen as a future possibility what we are seeing as present reality. He is afraid that business will take social responsi-
and
Marketing Management," in Meloan and Whitlo (eds.), Competition in Marketing (Los Angeles: Southern California, 1964), p. 15.
"'
University of
13. Theodore Levitt, "Dangers of Social Responsibility," Harvard Business Review, XXXVI (September-October, 1958), p. 44.
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RICHARD H. BRIEN, BETSY D. GELB, AND WILLIAM D. TRAMMELL
bility as an e x c u s e to s h a p e w h a t we say business is a l r e a d y s h a p i n g t h r o u g h m a r k e t i n g . If m a r k e t i n g is a l r e a d y king, we argue, w h a t can it b e c o m e e x c e p t a b e t t e r or w o r s e king?
The T w o Arenas
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We can, t h e n , e x p e c t m a r k e t i n g to exercise its p o w e r r e s p o n s i b l y in t w o arenas, the business s e c t o r a n d the i n s t i t u t i o n a l s e c t o r o u t s i d e it. Within the business sector, the n e e d is for r e s t r a i n t in the m a r k e t i n g o f trivia a n d for a s h a r p e r focus o n p r o d u c t q u a l i t y and s a f e t y . In a d d i t i o n , a m e l d i n g of m a r k e t i n g and p u b l i c affairs is a n e c e s s i t y , w h a t e v e r the c o m b i n a t i o n w h i c h emerges m a y b e called. Such a m e l d implies r e c o g n i t i o n t h a t the p r o d u c t i v e m a n , as F r o m m e n v i s i o n e d h i m , is a m o r e desirable c u s t o m e r in the long run t h a n the a u t o m a t o n c o n f o r m i s t - a n d c e r t a i n l y a m o r e desirable friend, n e i g h b o r , a n d fellow citizen. O u t s i d e the business sector, m a r k e t i n g can a p p r o a c h e d u c a t i o n , religion, g o v e r n m e n t , and the arts to o f f e r a set o f useful tools,
r a t h e r t h a n to i m p o s e its value s y s t e m . W h a t a m a r k e t e r k n o w s a b o u t visual a t t e n t i o n spans has a l r e a d y b e e n a d a p t e d to bring the lessons o f " S e s a m e S t r e e t " to p r e s c h o o l y o u n g s t e r s . W h a t the m a r k e t e r k n o w s a b o u t mass m e d i a can also help a c o n s c i e n t i o u s g o v e r n m e n t official p r o m o t e r e s o u r c e c o n s e r v a t i o n . T h e m a r k e t i n g e x p e r t can b e useful in m a n y areas b e c a u s e his m e t h o d s are t h o s e o f s e t t i n g and m e e t i n g goals, r e s p o n d i n g to change, and helping to m a n a g e such change. Surely he can do m o r e f o r a u n i v e r s i t y t h a n selling the merits of its f o o t b a l l t e a m a n d m o r e f o r g o v e r n m e n t t h a n t u r n i n g c h a r i s m a t i c candidates into e l e c t e d officials. We believe t h a t c o r p o r a t e leaders at the highest level are b e g i n n i n g to u n d e r s t a n d ,,chat t h e y can a c c o m p l i s h w i t h m a r k e t i n g . N o w t h e y need to see the h o l l o w n e s s o f the a r g u m e n t t h a t if t h e y use their p o w e r to do m o r e t h a n sell goods, t h e y will be c a r r y i n g business b e y o n d business limits. T h e p o w e r o f m a r k e t i n g carried t h e m b e y o n d t h o s e limits years ago; the q u e s t i o n n o w is w h e t h e r m a r k e t i n g recognizes its o b l i g a t i o n s to the s o c i e t y it a l r e a d y p e r v a d e s .
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CALL FOR PAPERS Business Horizons is edited primarily for the responsible and intelligent executive who must know not only how to make effective decisions today, but also how to anticipate those that will be necessary tomorrow. The place of this bimonthly in the field of business publications lies between the business news magazine and the technical journal. In Business Horizons the aim is to relate significant subjects to the lives and careers of business managers. Because many of the readers of Business Horizons are time-pressed executives who want their reading matter clear and concise, we advise prospective authors against a formal, academic approach to their material. The editors also wish to point out that material of a highly specialized or technical nature should find its place in a more appropriate journal. The typical article for Business Horizons should run from 3,000 to 4,500 words or 10 to 15 t3/pewritten pages, elite type. All tables, charts, and illustrations should accompany the manuscript and carry complete source notes. Footnotes should be complete. Two copies of the manuscript should be submitted: one original on bond paper and one carbon copy. Submit papers to Editor, Business Horizons, School of Business, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47401. OOODOODODODOOOOOOOOODOOODDOI3~3OOOOODOODC~3ODOODDDODDOOOODOQDDOOODDDDOODDOODDO
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