8 The Marketing Book
stable limit or, under different circumstances,
slowly decline to nothing.
Over time, therefore, civilizations (and
economies) rise and fall but the overall progres-
sion is upwards and characterized by periods
of rapid development and/or stability when
conditions are favourable and of decline when
they are not. Observation would also seem to
suggest that not only is change inevitable but
that its pace is accelerating.
While it is often difficult to analyse the
major causes and likely effect of major struc-
tural change when one is living in the midst of
it, it seems likely that future historians will
regard the 1960s and 1970s as a period of
hausse in our economic and social evolution.
Certainly economic forecasters are inclined in
this direction through their interest in ‘the long
wave’ or Kondratieff cycle in economic devel-
opment. Similarly, management writers of the
standing of Drucker talk of ‘turbulence’ while
Toffler speaks of the third wave which will
bring about Galbraith’s post-industrial society.
And what has this to do with marketing?
Quite simply, everything. For the past two
hundred years the advanced industrial econo-
mies have prospered because the nature of
demand has been basic and obvious and
entrepreneurs have been able to devote their
energies to producing as much as possible for
as little as possible. But, in a materialistic
society, basic demand for standardized and
undifferentiated products has become satur-
ated and the ability to off-load surpluses onto
Third World developing economies is limited
by their inability to pay for these surpluses.
Product differentiation and an emphasis upon
selling provide temporary respite from the
imbalance but the accelerating pace of techno-
logical change rapidly outruns these. Indeed, in
the short run the substitution of technology for
unskilled and semi-skilled labour has resulted
in a rich working population, with much higher
discretionary purchasing power than ever
before, and a poor, unemployed and aging
sector with limited or no discretionary purchas-
ing power at all.
All the indications would seem to point to
the fact that we are in an age of transition
from one order to another. In terms of per-
sonal aspirations many people are growing
out of materialism and want, in Maslow’s
terminology, to ‘self-actualize’ or ‘do their
own thing’. As a consequence we are moving
towards a post-industrial, post-mass consump-
tion society which is concerned with quality
not quantity and the individual rather than
the mass. To cope with this we need a com-
plete rethink of our attitudes to production,
distribution and consumption and it is this
which marketing offers.
Marketing starts with the market and the
consumer. It recognizes that in a consumer
democracy money votes are cast daily and that
to win those votes you need to offer either a
better product at the same price or the same
product at a lower price than your competitors.
Price is objective and tangible but what is ‘a
better product’? Only one person can tell you –
the consumer. It follows, therefore, that a
marketing orientation starts and ends with
consumers and requires one to make what one
can sell rather than struggle to sell what one
can make. But marketing is not a philanthropic
exercise in which producers give away their
goods. Indeed, the long-run interest of the
consumer requires that they do not, for other-
wise as with eating the seed corn, we will
eventually finish up with nothing at all. Pro-
ducers are entitled to profits and the more
value they add and the greater the satisfaction
they deliver, the more the customer will be
prepared to pay for this greater satisfaction.
Marketing therefore is all about mutually sat-
isfying exchange relationships for which the
catalyst is the producer’s attempt to define and
satisfy the customer’s need better.Marketing misunderstood
The emphasis thus far, and of the chapter as a
whole, has been upon the need for a new