Within the recent decades, the worldview of marketing has undergone significant changes, predetermining the shift towards service-centered logic and correspondent expansion of marketing concepts.
The ongoing processes in the community and the changing environment explain the popularity of the renewed concept of marketing developed by Kotler and Levy by incorporating the view of marketing as social activity along with its business implication.
Acknowledging the fact that the purposes of marketing in present day community cannot be limited to selling certain products, modern marketing researchers use Kotler and Levy’s expanded concept of marketing as an axiom for developing their theories.
Kotler and Levy (1969) noted that “As a society moves beyond the stage where shortages of food, clothing, and shelter are the major problems, it begins to organize to meet other social needs that formerly had been put aside” (p. 10).
Indicating the impact of this significant societal shift upon the marketing domain, Kotler and Levy did not make attempts to redefine the meaning of the product development and communicating the brand ideas to the potential consumers, but rather stimulated the application of theoretical knowledge to marketing of services, people and ideas and social activity in general.
Crane and Desmond (2002) noted that “the societal marketing concept is clearly an extension of the marketing concept, rather than a fundamental reconstruction of marketing theory”.
In other words, Kotler and Levy did not deny the fundamental marketing principles, but rather applied them to new dimensions of the community life. Recognizing the significance of broadening the concept of marketing, Hirschman (1983) noted that “aesthetic and ideological products are among the most important and intrinsically useful classes of phenomena for marketers to investigate” (p. 53).
Exploring important societal shifts and broadening the concept of marketing accordingly, Kotler and Levy updated the marketing theoretical framework and allowed other researchers to apply marketing knowledge to societal activities.
Broadening the concept of marketing by Kotler and Levy allowed applying it not only to business firms but various non-profit organizations and supporting the claim that main marketing principles can be implemented by management of political parties, educational institutions, art organizations and so on for enhancing the effectiveness of their operations and improving the end outcome.
Vargo & Lusch (2004) noted that “Regardless of the type of organization, the fundamental process does not change; people still exchange their often collective and distributed specialized skills for the individual and collective skills of others in monetization and marketing systems” (p. 8).
Comparing and contrasting the main processes within profit and non-profit organizations, the researchers tried to explain the underlying factors having impact upon the choices made by the participants of the exchange.
Trying to make the analysis of various levels of the marketing processes more comprehensive, Svensson (2005) coined a term of spherical marketing concept for establishing the links between various dimensions without underestimating any of them.
Thus, consistent with the expanded concept of marketing developed by Kotler and Levy, Svensson’s theory is aimed at connecting and systematizing data on upstream and downstream marketing channels. Focusing on practical implications of the findings, Gainer and Padanyi (2006) pointed at the benefits of implementing the expanded marketing concept in developing the internal culture of an organization.
Recognizing the fact that even non-profit organizations have their market and target customers, the organizations are expected to achieve higher levels of consumer satisfaction, creating a competitive edge and improving their reputation among peers.
Thus, Kotler and Levy’s expansion of traditional concept of marketing was beneficial for developing the internal culture of different organizations by implementing the marketing knowledge to societal activities.
The concept of marketing which has been revitalized by Kotler and Levy stimulated not only further theoretical research of new domains, but also predetermined the shifts in marketing practice. McCole (2004) emphasized the importance of filling the gaps between theoretical knowledge and practice, contrasting the concepts of retro and experiential marketing approaches, while the advantages of the latter strategy are obvious.
Considering the offered shifts in theoretical framework, Webster (2002) suggested shifting the emphasis towards customer value for the purpose of meeting the growing demands of consumer population and enhancing the effectiveness of the selected strategies.
Developing the same idea of making customer value one of the central issues in modern marketing theories, Sheth, Sisodia and Sharma (2000) pointed at the importance of taking into account the expanded marketing concept for developing the strategies for various types of organizations regardless of the peculiarities of their market and role in the society.
The concept of marketing broadened by Kotler and Levy was popular not only among marketing theoreticians, but also practitioners who pointed at the benefits of implementing the revitalized marketing concept to non-business organizations.
Shedding light upon important societal shifts and broadening the traditional concept of marketing, Kotler and Levy made a significant contribution to further development of the sphere by involving the societal activity into the research and allowing implementation of the revitalized marketing concepts by management of non-profit organizations.
Reference List
Crane, A. and Desmond, J. (2002). Societal marketing and morality. European Journal of Marketing, 36(5/6), 548-569.
Gainer, B. and Padanyi, P. (2006). “Applying the marketing concept to cultural organizations: An empirical study of the relationship between market orientation and performance”. International Journal of Non-Profit and Voluntary Sector of Marketing, 7(2), 182-193.
Hirschman, E. C. (1983). “Aesthetics, ideologies and the limits of the
Kotler, P., & Levy, S. (1969). “Broadening the concept of marketing”. Journal of Marketing, 33 (January ), 10-15.
McCole, P. (2004). “Refocusing marketing to reflect practice: The changing role of marketing for business”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 22( 5), 531 – 539
Sheth, J., Sisodia, R. and Sharma, A. (2000). “The antecedents and consequences of customer-centric marketing”. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 28(1), 55-66.
Svensson, G. (2005). “The spherical marketing concept: A revitalization of the marketing concept”, European Journal of Marketing, 39(1/2), 5 – 15
Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (2004). “Evolving to a new dominant logic for marketing”. Journal of Marketing, 68(January), 1-17.
Webster, F. (2002). “Marketing management in changing times”. Marketing Management, 11 (1), 18-23.