Marketing is Marketing—Everywhere!
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Abstract
The theme of this paper is that in seeking to develop strategies for the future, we should not neglect or overlook hard-won lessons from the past. Learning through direct experience is almost invariably a process of experimentation or trial and error. It is uncertain, time-consuming, inefficient, and often risky. Accordingly, if we encounter a problem new to ourselves, our first reaction should be: “Has anyone encountered this problem before?” If so, then “What did they do, with what results?” Answers to these questions are to be found in the so-called secondary sources that record the knowledge gained by previous generations. Knowledge is distilled experience which has accumulated over time. It represents our current understanding of how the world works and, because it has been recorded, it is usually easily available and often free. Common sense dictates that we should start any problem-solving activity by establishing what we know already. To support this argument, this article reviews the processes of knowledge creation and ‘cumulativity’. Unless and until we have confirmed what is already known about a subject, any effort to solve a new problem can only be a hit-or-miss affair — a case of managerial myopia. Therefore, while addressing an important question such as the role of marketing in emerging economies, we should first define what we mean by ‘emerging economies’ and ‘marketing.’ Marketing is a synthetic discipline that integrates findings from other disciplines like economics, psychology, and sociology into a holistic explanation of commercial exchange behaviour. As for emerging economies, indeed, all the advanced economies were emerging economies once, and it is quite evident that as the Industrial Revolution that started in Great Britain in the 18th century spread through Europe and North America, so each newly indutrialized country, in turn, achieved take-off more quickly by learning from the experience of its predecessors. In conclusion, this paper cites three examples of robust ideas that have stood the test of time and offers important insights into marketing today: Ricardo's ‘Theory of Comparative Advantage’ which argues that countries should specialize in doing what they do best and exchange their surpluses with other countries Darwin‘s theory of evolution and its marketing derivative — the product life cycle Copeland's ‘classification of goods’ that first identified the importance of defining goods and services in terms of needs and benefits. The message is that our knowledge of marketing is universal. Marketing is marketing—everywhere.