Probable Effects of a National Emergency on Marketing Functions and Policies

Abstract

N ACCEPTING a place on your program to discuss the topic assigned, I want to make it quite clear that I did not accept the responsibility of defining what constitutes a national emergency, or of making any prediction as to whether such an emergency will arise in the immediate future. I am not even aware of the definitions which your program committee had in mind when this topic was selected. I strongly suspect, however, that whatever their definitions they would now agree that nothing has developed or confronts this country at the present time which can in any sense be described as a national emergency. I am obliged, therefore, to discuss the problem in rather general and abstract terms, directing my analysis toward suggesting what might be some of the effects of any drastic and sudden shift in the conditions of supply and demand arising from any cause whatever. One broad aspect of the problem I may be permitted to dismiss with a word in passingnamely, the special problem of conducting marketing operations under increasing government regulations. Increasing government controls over price, production, and distribution facilities such as transportation might actually constitute the crux of the problem of marketing during a national crisis. On the other hand, marketing is likely to be subjected to an increased number and variety of government controls in the immediate future as in the immediate past, whether or not a national emergency arises. A recent publication of the Brookings Institution emphasized the inescapable fact that government is the architect who designs the business system and that the business man inevitably is obliged to find means of adjusting himself to a constantly changing business structure. Business has been accused of harboring rigidities of various kinds in its price structures, in its marketing methods, and in its views of national economic and social problems. To me it appears that the business man has exhibited a vast amount of flexibility-that quality which economists cherish so much-in adjusting himself to the new rules of the business game as fast as they are devised by economists and others in Washington. Every going concern in the United States might well post up over its portals the sign sometimes displayed by retail establishments-No interruptions to business while alterations are proceeding. The major problem with respect to marketing during a crisis has frequently been stated as the transition from a buyer's market to a seller's market. Accepting that formulation of the issue, I will attempt to show that it should be applied with important reservations and that marketing of most products would go on in much the same way as before. I will deal briefly with four aspects of the problem in turn-namely, the probable effects of a national emergency on (a) underlying conditions of supply and demand