Contemporary Issues in Marketing and Consumer

Transcript:Contemporary Issues in Marketing and Consumer:
Contemporary Issues in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour Second edition Elizabeth Parsons, Pauline Maclaran and Andreas Chatzidakis 1. Introduction: How has marketing changed? A focus on markets, what they are and how they are constituted or shaped. A service dominant view of markets and marketing: moving from an output- or (goods)-centred focus to a process (service)-centred focus. Here service is conceptualised as ‘the process of doing something for and with another party and is thus always dynamic and collaborative’ (2009: 221) “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” - (American Marketing Association website, 2013) Huge strides in computing technology mean that consumers are increasingly informed because they are networked globally. Consumer co-creation: this movement identifies the co-creation of value in markets and places the consumer in a reciprocal relationship with the organisation. Processes, which empower consumers, not only through the operation of extra knowledge regarding products and services, but also through the ability to connect with Introduction to like-minded others and share experiences in online brand and consumer communities. Consumers are also routinely involved in the process of product design in design workshops or through design competitions. How have consumers changed? Sustainability is ‘a trend that is simultaneously economic, political, cultural, philosophic and technological in nature; that is vast in scope; and which reflects the economic, political, cultural, philosophic and technological milieu of its day’ (Mittelstaedt et al., 2014: 254). The Developmental School of Macromarketing argues that marketing offers an important set of tools to promote the development and welfare of wider society Scholars have made a series of suggestions as to how we should go about doing this: bearing responsibility for the environmental impact of the choices we make; thinking about consumption not as a political right but rather as a responsibility; breaking the link between consumption and carbon emissions; and putting an end to seeing the propensity to consume as the natural state of humans (Kilbourne and Mittelstaedt, 2012: 297–8). How have consumers changed? 2. Postmodern marketing and beyond The postmodern era signalled a major change in Western thinking and philosophising. Over its fifty-year history, postmodernism spread to affect all disciplines and branches of knowledge, including marketing, where it has made its biggest impact in relation to the understanding of consumers. Marketing and consumption have been pinpointed as key