Critical theory and consumer marketing

Abstract

This paper draws upon Critical Theory, especially the Frankfurt School, and advocates a critically oriented marketing theory which breaks away from the technicist preoccupations dominating much of traditional marketing science. The conventional assumption of marketing as being in the business of need satisfaction is rejected, and a case is made for research which draws attention to the way marketing processes and techniques create biases towards consumption and distort the individual's chances of sorting out what needs and wishes are important. Two new metaphors for marketing theory are suggested: marketing as mystification and marketing as cultural doping.