Theories Of Marketing Theory

Theories “increase scientific understanding through a systemized structure capable of both explaining and predicting phenomenon”(Hunt, 1991). Hunt (1991) emphasizes that this nature of a theory must be systematically relates to set of statements, including some law-like generalizations that are empirically testable. In the marketing discipline, there has been an ongoing debate on what precisely the proper domain is or what the boundaries of marketing theories are (Sheth, Gardner, & Garrett, 1988). Kotler and Levy (1969) suggest that marketing is not only a phenomenon limited to traditional business arena, but also a societal activity. In addition, Hunt (1991) limits the scope of marketing with regard to three dimensions, namely micro/macro,

As a result, the marketing discipline nowadays hosts an array of theories that “have considerable depth but also an appalling lack of breadth”(Sheth et al., 1988).

Since the emergence of marketing as an independent discipline at the beginning of 1900s, a number of schools dominated the discipline, typically one at a time. In studying marketing’s “schools of thought”, Sheth et al. (1988) note that the “schools of thought” can be considered as “theories” or “marketing thought processes” depending on the semantics. Furthermore, they discover twelve marketing schools of thought within the marketing discipline. In line with the definition of a theory presented above, it is clear that within each of the twelve marketing schools of thought discovered by Sheth et al. (1988), there are a number of interrelated theories with systemized structures for both explaining and predicting phenomena.

MO is closely linked to the marketing concept that was developed in the 1950s and 1960s (Drucker, 1954; Levitt, 1969). Being a measurement of the behaviors and activities that reflect the marketing concept (Kohli & Jaworski, 1990; Levitt, 1969; Webster, 1988), to date MO is the cornerstone of the marketing management and marketing strategy paradigms. Even though, to the researcher’s knowledge, there is no consensus for the time being on the general theory of MO, the roots of this concept go back to the very foundations of marketing thinking. In addition, a wealth of literature proposing more or less comprehensive models for understanding MO has emerged over the past two decades. As typical representatives of the managerial school of thought, widely cited MO literature represents the features discussed in the above section. Thus, the bricks for putting together a comprehensive theory of MO are available in the prolific marketing literature. All these evidences justify solidarity of the MO concept as the major theoretical foundation of this study. Nevertheless, the emerging and dynamic nature of this study extends the domain of MO that have been studied so far while providing a possibility to make an important, novel contribution. More specifically, the research into MO is based on economic principals and concepts, and is only marginally influenced by the social or psychological variables