History of Marketing - Essay Example

At the end, it also gives brief biographical outlines of Henry Ford and Philip Kotler, the two great personalities who contributed to the development of the modern marketing thought. Marketing, its definition, meaning and scope. The establishment of a market economy in the 20th century has brought about dramatic changes in the social and economic structures and revolutionized the world economy (Bartels, 1976).1 Marketing is a combination of factors that have to be taken into consideration before taking up selling or promotional activities. Fred E. Clark (1922)2 defined marketing as the efforts that result in the transfer in the ownership of goods.

Reciprocity and redistribution are the ideal and essential properties of good marketing, where marketing gives to the society more than takes from the society. The modern marketing thought evolved in the early 20th century and students of marketing were basically trained as economists. From 1900 to 1960, over 100 books related to general marketing were published with over 80 authors contributing to those works. By 1900 marketing managers realized that demand is the desire plus ability to purchase.

Desire could be altered with help of advertising, sales promotion and salesmanship. With the increasing competition, cost became the principal determinant of price. Concepts like the elasticity of demand became the parameters of marketing in general. The first decade of 1900 saw the emergence of marketing thought with the realization of the distribution problems and planned collection of market information. Concepts were introduced into marketing from established disciplines like economics, psychology, sociology, and scientific management.

In the second decade (1910-20), many basic marketing concepts were added to the commerce, trade and distribution topics. Ralph Starr Butler3 and Arch W. Shaw4 were the men instrumental in developing marketing concepts. According to Butler, marketing was the art of co-coordinating and planning of the complicated relations among the various factors in trade. Shaw (1912) distinguished three basic dynamic operations in business: production, distribution, and administration. From 1914 to 1917 Butler added many marketing concepts.

From 1920 to 1930, built upon foundations laid in the first two decades, the Principles of Marketing were first presented in the book form by integrating scattered concepts and tentative generalizations. In his Marketing Methods and Policies,5 Paul D. Converse (1921) distinguished between middlemen's functions related to individual firms and middlemen's activities related to marketing in general. Fred E. Clark6 defined the market structure as built on two processes--transfer of title and transfer of goods; and middlemen included merchants, advertising agencies, banks and warehouses.

Goods classes included products for personal, implements and machines used in production, and the machines needed to produce the equipment used in production. Marketing efficiency is judged from two viewpoints: from private angle--operating efficiency; and public view--social significance. The next ten years (1930-40) saw the revision and expansion