A seminal framework ofmarketing schools: revisited and

updatedStefan Lagrosen

University West, Trollhattan, Sweden, and

Goran SvenssonOslo School of Management, Oslo, Norway

Abstract

Purpose – The objective is to re-visit and up-date a seminal framework of marketing schools.

Design/methodology/approach – The authors provide a conceptual description and positioning ofold, modern and recent marketing schools.

Findings – Recent developments in marketing – such as services marketing, industrial marketingand relationship marketing – do not fit into the seminal framework of marketing schools.

Research limitations/implications – The authors have limited the discussion to the humanpractice of marketing and the academic discipline of marketing. In addition, the authors’ focus is onmarketing as part of business.

Practical implications – The up-dated framework of marketing schools may assist practitioners tounderstand the current status of marketing by connecting to the past, and the future by revealingunexplored areas of the marketing discipline.

Originality/value – The up-dated framework of marketing schools builds on and extends theseminal framework in question to incorporate the recent developments in marketing. In extension, itreveals a white spot in the research of the marketing discipline – a field of further research that mayfocus on a combination of economic and relational dimensions of marketing.

Keywords Marketing theory, Schools, Transactional analysis

Paper type Conceptual paper

IntroductionAt the end of the 1940s, production efficiencies were regarded as essential for achievingand maintaining successful and prosperous business operations in the marketplace. In the1950s, marketing scholars began to argue that corporations should pay more attention tothe customers’ needs and wants (McKitterick, 1957). This fundamental approach is oftenreferred to as “the marketing concept”. It is one of the most important and famous conceptsever developed in marketing literature. McKitterick (1957, p. 78) states:

. . . the principal task of the marketing function in a management concept is not so much to beskillful in making the customer do what suits the interests of the business as to be skillful inconceiving and then making the business do what suits the interests of the customer.

Thus, the marketing concept holds that the customer needs and wants should be theaim of any marketing activity and marketing process. Subsequently, the turn towardsthe customer was a major shift in current management views at that time. In addition,other contemporary scholars of that time agreed. For example, Keith (1960, p. 35)concludes that:

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/1751-1348.htm

A seminalframework

369

Journal of Management HistoryVol. 12 No. 4, 2006

pp. 369-384q Emerald Group Publishing Limited

1751-1348DOI 10.1108/17511340610692743

Our attention has shifted from problems of production to problems of marketing, from theproduct we can make to the product the consumer wants us to make, from the company itselfto the marketplace.

These ideas generated at the time a seed that has underpinned and triggered theforthcoming developments of marketing. Marketing may be divided into two parts,namely the academic discipline of marketing and the practice of marketing.

While the practice of marketing is very old, the academic discipline of marketinggoes back to the early twentieth century when classical schools of marketing emerged(Copeland, 1923; Parlin, 1912; Shaw, 1912; Weld, 1916). In the 1950s, a strong expansionof the discipline commenced by the introduction of a practitioner-oriented andpedagogical approach of marketing – the so-called “marketing-mix” or as oftenknown, the “4P:s” (Borden, 1942, 1964; Culliton, 1948; McGarry, 1950; McCarthy, 1960,1964). In fact, the academic discipline was dominated by this approach until the late1970s and early 1980s when complementary approaches of marketing emerged (Fisket al., 1993; Berry and Parasuraman, 1993; Gronroos, 1979, 1990; Hakansson, 1982;Shostack, 1997).

A brief retrospective viewMany of the practices that we currently refer to as marketing have been used forcenturies. For instance, Pilbeam (2003) shows how Madame Tussaud, in the earlynineteenth century, deftly practiced advertising, public relations and marketsegmentation in a way that was to give her establishment its enduring status.However, Bartels (1976) argues that marketing should not be seen merely as a practicebut also as a conception. As such, the first trembling steps were taken in the dawn ofthe early twentieth century. In addition, it took some time before the academicmarketing efforts gained noticeable influence on the marketing activities of companies.As is depicted by Church and Clark (2003) in their description of the marketing of threeleading consumer-product companies between 1918 and 1939, practices were learnedmore from imitating competitors than from academia.

At that time marketing had long been regarded as more or less parasitic, and tradewas seen as adding costs rather than value to the products (Bartels, 1976). Much of theearliest work in marketing was aimed at amending this picture.

The roots of the early marketing efforts lay mainly in the field of economics.In contrast to the dominating economic theories of the time, however, the earlymarketing authors were more empirical, practical and descriptive. It was not until the1930s that the interest of scientific aspects of marketing really took hold (Bartels, 1976).In addition, the early texts in marketing mainly dealt with the trade of physical goods(Engwall, 1992).

According to Bartels (1976) it is probable that the word “marketing”, as a noun, firstwas used between 1906 and 1911. He claims that the first meaning of marketing wasthe combination of the factors that should be considered before selling, or of variouspromotional activities; the essence of marketing lies in this combination of factors.

The first courses in the “distributive industries” were given in 1902 in theUniversities of Michigan and California (Bartels, 1976). Although the titles of the earlycourses usually identified them with distribution, they dealt with many of the subjectsthat were later to be included in the field of marketing (Bartels, 1976). In 1905, theUniversity of Pennsylvania offered a course on “the marketing of products” which is

JMH12,4

370

the first known example of a course in which the word marketing is included in thetitle. In 1910, a course called “marketing methods” was offered by the University ofWisconsin. The same year, the course leader, Professor Ralph Starr Butler, producedsome pamphlets with the same title. Seven years later he published his book, alsocalled “marketing methods”, which may have been the first comprehensive textbook inthe field (Bartels, 1976). In fact, Romilla (Robert Millar) (1916) also wrote a textbook onmarketing for teaching purposes in the early twentieth century. With foresight, heargued that businessmen should try to look at business from the customers’ side ofthe desk counter.

Marketing schools – revisitedIn order to understand the novel approaches in marketing that have recently appearedin the last decades, it is necessary to have an understanding of the historicaldevelopment of the field and its theoretical structure. Therefore, we have given a briefretrospective view of the history of the marketing in the previous section by presentingthe dawn of the field. In this section, we will present a way of structuring the differentstrands of marketing thought, based on the seminal work of Sheth et al. (1988). Withthis foundation laid, we will proceed to introduce briefly some of the more recentadditions of marketing schools in the next following sections. We will also make anattempt to position them in relation to the described seminal framework (Sheth et al.,1988) at the end of the paper.

A seminal frameworkSheth et al. (1988) propose a framework to identify different marketing schools. It isbased upon the dimensions of interactive/non-interactive perspectives versuseconomic/non-economic perspectives. They argue that they are crucial to structurethe elements in marketing. These two dimensions combined give rise to four groups ofschools (Table I). Sheth et al. (1988) have identified and classified three schools intoeach of these four groups.

In the following four paragraphs, we re-visit the seminal framework of marketingschools (Sheth et al. (1988), and provide brief descriptions of the marketing schoolsidentified.

The non-interactive/economic schoolsThe earliest theories in marketing adopted a non-interactive perspective in which theirfocus lay solely on the producer who was portrayed as the active part having impact on

Non-interactive Interactive

Economic Commodity InstitutionalFunctional FunctionalistRegional Managerial

Non-economic Buyer behaviour SystemsActivist Social exchangeMacromarketing Organisational dynamics

Source: Sheth et al., 1988

Table I.A seminal framework of

marketing schools

A seminalframework

371

the behaviour of the buyers. These theories also contain a strong economic perspectivein which the actors are considered to be driven by economic values. The centre ofattention is on critical economic variables including production and distributionefficiency, prices and consumer income levels. These schools emerged from the field ofeconomics and although they were among the first to appear they still hold highrelevance according to Sheth et al. (1988).

The non-interactive/economic schools have some common denominators, such as:they belong to the early schools of marketing, they apply a non-behavioural approach,and they consider the perspective of the marketer/seller. The following schools areincluded into this category (Table I):

. The commodity school focused on the physical characteristics – and theclassification – of products and consumer buying behaviour for differentproducts. The commodity school might be seen as having a focus on afundamental component of exchange in marketing, namely the product. Itemerged in the first decades of the last century (Copeland, 1923; Rhoades, 1927).It is considered to be a classical school of marketing. One famous contributionthat dates back to this school is the classification of consumer goods intoconvenience goods, shopping goods and specialty goods (Parlin, 1912).

. The functional school on the other hand focused more on activities that should becarried out in the marketing process. The functional school might be seen ashaving a focus on a fundamental component of exchange in marketing, namely thefunction. Similarly it also emerged in the first decades of the last century (Shaw,1912, 1916; Weld, 1917; Vanderblue, 1921; Westerfield, 1915; Fullbrook, 1940), andis considered to be a classical school of marketing. It contained a problem in thatthe scholars were never able to agree on a standard set of marketing functions,which is possibly the reason that this school lately has attracted little interest.

. The regional school is often overlooked in overviews of marketing thought. Itfocuses on the analyses where consumers are more likely to do their shopping.The school emerged in the 1930-1940 period, and is limited to physical distancesto estimate locations.

The interactive/economic schoolsThe interactive/economic schools emerged at least a decade later than the previous groupand are therefore more sophisticated. They have rejected the non-interactive perspective,and their view is rather that marketing is to be understood as an interactive processinvolving relations and effects among producers, channel members and consumers.

The interactive/economic schools have some common denominators, such as: theyare based upon economic principles and constructs, they underestimate social andpsychological variables, and they consider the perspectives of both the marketer/sellerand the customer/buyer. Accordingly, the non-interactive/economic schoolsacknowledge the dependence between buyers and sellers (i.e. an interactiveapproach). The following schools are included into this category (Table I):

. The institutional school is one of the most important ones in marketing thought.The focus is on analysing the organisations involved in the marketing process.It emerged in the 1920s and 1930s (Weld, 1916; Butler, 1923; Breyer, 1934;Converse and Huegy, 1940). It is considered to be the last of three classical

JMH12,4

372

schools of marketing. One stimulus for the school was the critique of middlemenfor adding more costs than value. The scholars of this school analysed thestructure and evolution of channel systems based on economic efficiency criteria.Consequently, theories regarding retailing and wholesaling were developed(Bartels, 1976; Hollander, 1959). The scientific approach of this school and thetheories of Hollander in particular, strengthened the marketing subject’sacademic status (Cunningham and Cunningham, 1988).

. The functionalist school is a complex and unusual one. It stresses that marketingis a structural system of linked and dynamic relationships that are interdependent.It is based upon the classical schools, but places them in a wider context. It is basedlargely on the writings of one single person, Alderson (1957, 1965). It emerged inthe 1950-1960 period. The main attention was directed at the importance of theexchange process and the heterogeneity of supply and demand.

. The managerial school is the one that has had most impact on marketing fordecades. It emerged in the period from 1940 to1960 (Borden, 1942, 1964; Culliton,1948; McGarry, 1950; McCarthy, 1960, 1964). It has brought such concepts as themarketing concept, the marketing mix (4Ps), the product live cycle and marketsegmentation into the realms of marketing. Additional Ps have been proposed(Kotler, 1986; Judd, 1987; Booms and Bitner, 1982) as well as mixes (Frey, 1961;Lazer and Kelley, 1962). The elegance and practicality of the theories of thisschool have given it a dominating influence on the traditional marketing field.

The non-interactive/non-economic schoolsThe non-interactive/non-economic schools are relatively new with their origins in the1960s and 1970s. The proponents of these schools sensed that the actions of the actorsin markets could not be adequately explained by economic analysis alone. Instead,social and psychological factors were introduced (compare the previous ones!).

The non-interactive/non-economic schools have some common denominators, suchas: they are based upon social and behavioural areas of research, their constructs stresssocial and psychological variables and they consider the perspectives of both themarketer/seller and the consumer/customer/buyer. It represents a shift in the historicalevolution of marketing from a macro- to a micro-level – i.e. from economics to behaviourand from marketplace to customers/consumers. Non-interactive/non-economic schoolsmay be seen as a breaking-point between older and newer schools of marketing. Thefollowing schools are included into this category (Table I):

. The buyer behaviour school, which has attracted enormous interest. It emerged inthe 1960-1970s period. The scholars in this school realised that consumers’ actionscannot exclusively be explained by the “economic man” concept of maximisingtheir own income to satisfy their needs. As a consequence, they tried to find morerealistic explanations for consumer behaviour by borrowing theory from the fieldsof psychology, sociology and anthropology. In particular, the area of consumerbehaviour is highly relevant in the examination of best practices of marketing.

. The macromarketing school, gives more attention to environmental and societalforces such as technology, political regulation, societal trends and competition.The influences of these factors are to a large extent beyond the control ofindividual actors, but they still affect their activities. The macromarketing school

A seminalframework

373

emerged during the 1960s and 1970s. The success of this school has given rise tothe term macromarketing, which is an important area of the marketing discipline.

. In contrast to the previous school, the activist school, criticises the effects thatmarketing has on the environment. It emerged during the 1960s and 1970s. Thismight have been the only school whose conception lay outside the marketingdiscipline. In response to condemnation from activists, some marketing scholarsstarted to study the downside of questionable marketing practices.

The interactive/non-economic schoolsThe interactive-non-economic schools combine the complexity of interactivity andnon-economic focus, which make them rather complex. The interactive/non-economicschools have some common denominators, such as: they are based upon behavioural areasof research rather than economics, they are fairly new, and they apply an interactiveapproach to transactions in the marketplace in which both the buyer and the seller are seenas equally important. The following schools are included into this category (Table I):

. The organisational dynamics school argues that inter-organisational behaviouris the basis for understanding the marketing process. Thus, this school can beseen as a descendant of the institutional school with the difference that social andpsychological concepts are the main focus rather than economic factors.It emerged during the 1960s and 1970s.

. The major argument of the systems school is that organisations should be seen assystems in which the whole is more than the sum of the parts. This school hasborrowed many aspects from sociology and even biology. It too emerged duringthe 1960s and 1970s. Sheth et al. (1988) attribute the relatively low impact that thistheory has had on marketing, in contrast to the effect in general management, to atoo quick adoption. This may have lead to a superficial interpretation of the theorybeing embraced, leading to less bearing on marketing thought.

. Finally, we have the social exchange school, which has raised controversy byclaiming that marketing theory applies to all social transactions and not just toeconomic transactions (e.g. religion and politics). They also argue that exchangeshould be the basis for a generic theory of marketing. Both these arguments havebeen challenged by scholars with a more traditional view of the marketingsubject. It emerged in the 1960s and 1970s.

Four of the 12 schools presented above have had a particularly important influence onthe field of marketing. Three of the schools are the classical schools of marketing(i.e. the commodity, functional and institutional schools) and the other is themanagerial school of marketing (i.e. the dominant one – marketing mix or 4P:s). In thenext section, we will briefly discuss a few recent developments in the academic field ofmarketing, all of which complements the schools of marketing identified by Sheth et al.(1988). These developments also expands the boundaries of the seminal frameworkbeyond its current limits.

Marketing schools – recent developmentsTraditionally, marketing has mainly been concerned with consumer mass markets(Engwall, 1992). However, in the last 30 years, theories regarding other forms of

JMH12,4

374

business have gained ground. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, two separate strands ofthought challenging the traditional mass-market based literature began to takeform. The first, which had been looking at marketing in industrial markets, and thesecond, which had discovered the importance of services, both started investigatingthe peculiarities of their fields. One aspect that is common to these two lines ofdevelopment is the significance of relations. This has lead to the emergence of theoriesregarding relationship marketing. Their proponents claim that they constitute a newparadigm of marketing utterly different from the traditional marketing theories, andincompatible with traditional marketing theory (Gummesson, 1999; O’Malley andTynan, 2000).

Services marketingIn the 1930s, Converse (1930) argued for the importance of services in the field ofmarketing. Other early research efforts in services date back to the 1960s (Gustafsonand Ricard, 1964; Rathmell, 1966, 1974; Donabedian, 1966; Hutchinson and Stolle, 1968;Stephenson and Willet, 1969). Ever since, there has been an increasing interest inresearch in this area and the service marketing literature has gained widespreadacceptance. (Fisk et al., 1993; Berry and Parasuraman, 1993). Brown et al. (1994) arguethat no field within marketing has attracted the same passion since the appearance ofthe consumer behaviour theories in the 1960s.

In contrast to many of the earlier fields of marketing that were almost entirelydeveloped in the USA, service marketing is an international field. Gronroos (1990)maintains that originally three schools of services marketing appeared; one American,one French and one Scandinavian. In the early days of service marketing, much timewas spent in explaining and justifying the differences between the marketing ofservices and goods as the very legitimacy of the field was questioned (Brown et al.,1994). Initially the characteristics of services being intangible, heterogeneous,inseparable and perishable were crystallised as the main justifying factors for separatetreatment (Gummesson, 1991). As the field of marketing has matured, this earlierrelative consensus has become more and more questioned by authors claiming otherfactors such as the transfer of ownership being the real dividing factor (Lovelock andGummesson, 2004). Furthermore, the differences in the production process betweenindustrial goods and services were early recognised and the term servuction wassometimes used to illustrate the uniqueness of services in this regard (Eiglier andLangeard, 1993).

This development has taken place in conjunction with the major changes in societyfrom the industrial to the post-industrial society, which is based on services (Bell,1973).Thus, the increasing interest for the services sector was helped by the dramatictransformations that were taking place in the sector in the 1980s (Bell, 1973). In most of thedeveloped world this was a period of deregulation and expansion of services. Furthermore,internationalisation of services increased, and in the early 1990s the United Kingdombecame the first country to export more services than physical goods (Egan, 2001). Thismade knowledge concerning the marketing of services all the more vital.

Among the different currents in service marketing, the one concerning the constructof service quality is one of the strongest. There are a number of reviews ofthe construct, such as Seth et al. (2005), Roest and Pieters (1997), Buttle (1996),Asubonteng et al. (1996). Some early publications regarding quality, which have

A seminalframework

375

continued to dominate the field were published in the 1980s. Particularly, the“Gaps model” presented by Parasuraman et al. (1985) and their examination of thedimensions of service quality and the development of the SERVQUAL research model(Zeithaml et al., 1990) remain in the focus of the field to this day. Also theconceptualisation of the differences between technical and functional quality as well asthe relevance of image portrayed by Gronroos (1984) has had a huge influence on theformation of the field. This development coincides with a generally heightenedawareness of the significance of quality issues in industry. Nowadays, even though theactual performance of service quality in service encounters takes place at anoperational level, services have become crucial in the wider strategic, tactical, andoperational management of business operations in many organisations. In addition,services researchers have begun to go beyond mere cognitive factors, addressing theinfluence of emotions (Edvardsson, 2005) and the concept of excellence (Johnston,2004). In recent years, service marketing has provided input to the relationshipmarketing paradigm, as it is highly applicable to services (Gummesson, 1998).

Industrial marketingIndustrial marketing has traditionally received less attention than consumermarketing, possibly because it was regarded as less glamorous (Egan, 2001). Inaddition, it was considered rather simple and straightforward (Egan, 2001). Research,particularly by the IMP-group, has highlighted the intricacies of marketing and made ita vibrant research field. Principal contributions are the interaction and networkapproaches to marketing (Hakansson, 1982; Hakansson and Snehota, 1995).

The interaction approach implies that both customers and suppliers are seen asactive partners who seek, select, develop, manage, and assess their relationships (Ford,2004). This means that the relationships are the companies’ prime assets (Ford, 2004).This approach further depicts the importance of business relations in the larger contextof business networks. In a network the role and form of marketing become ambiguousas all interactions have marketing implications (Gronroos, 1994). Furthermore, theseinteractions take place on many different levels and with so many people involved thatthey cannot possibly be controlled in detail by top management (Gummesson, 1999). Inthe network view the “focal company” is studied in the context of its relationships with,for example, customers, suppliers, distributors, competitors, co-operators (Ford, 2004).

There are crucial differences between the marketing of industrial and consumerproducts (see the managerial school of marketing). Hakansson and Snehota (1995)argue that a company’s role, development and performance in industrialproduct/service markets are explained by its ability to maintain and developbusiness relationships. Volumes, market share, profits, and growth depend upon howthe company handles its business relationships (Jansson, 1994). In addition, most costsand revenues stem from its business relationships (Jansson, 1994). Industrialmarketing is based upon a broad view to relationships, which makes it different fromother approaches to marketing in general (Sheth et al., 1988), and to relationshipmarketing (Sheth and Parvatiyar, 2000), inclusive of relationship marketing of services(Gronroos, 1995, 2000).

Mattsson and Johanson (2005) describe the evolution and positioning of the field ofindustrial marketing. It was originally developed in Scandinavia in the 1970s and1980s in close contact between industrial marketing/purchasing research and business

JMH12,4

376

practice (Hakansson and Wootz, 1975; Hakansson and Ostberg, 1975; Hakansson, 1982;Hallen, 1982; Jansson, 1982). The existing marketing theory at the time did not fit withpractice. It led to a quest for other theories, also outside the marketing field. The majordifferences between industrial product markets and consumer product markets isconstituted by aspects such as different market structures; this implies closer, morestable and longer-term relationships; more direct distribution channels; and morecomplex and sophisticated relationships in industrial markets (Hakansson and Wootz,1975; Hakansson, 1982; Hallen, 1982; Jansson, 1982). Research efforts have shown thatthe industrial market structures are rather rigid, with a marked preponderance of largecompanies. For industrial markets, geographical concentration tends to be greater, thenumbers of customers to be less, and the individual customer to be greater in size thanfor consumer markets, the competition often being oligopolistic instead of monopolistic(Jansson, 1994). Similarly, demand in industrial markets tends to be more inelastic thanin the marketing of consumer products (Jansson, 1994).

The pioneering research in the field of industrial marketing developed aninteraction model (Hakansson, 1982). Originally it was applied to buyer-sellerrelationships between European companies (Hallen and Johanson, 1989), thereafter itwas extended to companies from Asia, North America and Australia (Hakansson andSnehota, 2000). However, the innovative theory building beyond the traditionalmanagerial approach has not spread much beyond Western Europe (Mattsson andJohanson, 2005). The network aspect of industrial markets commenced to be developedwhere relationships were seen to evolve through interactions within industrialnetworks. Instead of the research being mainly focused on dyadic relationships, it wasextended to sets of links within networks (Hammarkvist et al., 1982; Mattsson andJohanson, 2005). The network aspect is described according to the three majordivisions made in industrial network theory between networks as relationships, asstructures, and as a process (Easton, 1992). In the first case, the focus is on therelationships of the network, e.g. what they look like, how they are established, orwhether they are direct or indirect (Jansson, 1994). Network structure concerns thenumber of links and the degree to which the organisations are linked to each other.Relationship processes are divided into sub-processes, where each process consists of anumber of stages or phases (Jansson, 1994). Network relationships also concern flowsor processes, e.g. the sequence over time of particular activities, or that the nodes areconnected to each other over time in a specific way (Jansson, 1994). An industrialnetwork model is the activities-resources-actors (ARA) model founded by Hakanssonand Johanson (1992). The model mainly focuses on dyadic relationships but also onnetwork structure in the form of sets of links within networks. In the latter case, therelationship focus is mostly kept by looking at the network as a number of direct (thedyadic aspect) and indirect relationships (the network aspect) (Anderson et al., 1994).Dyads are connected to three major types of networks: activity patterns of links,resource constellations of ties and webs of actor bonds (Hakansson and Snehota, 1995).

Relationship marketingRelationship marketing has been developed, particularly in connection with servicemarketing and industrial marketing. In addition, it has been influenced by traditionalmarketing and total quality management (Gummesson, 1999). In its early phases,relationship marketing was seen as pertaining exclusively to service and industrial

A seminalframework

377

markets, but more recently it has made its entrance also in mass consumer marketing(O’Malley and Tynan, 2000).

According to Brown et al. (1994), the advent of relationship marketing has lead to adefinite shift away from the traditional marketing approaches. It came largely as aresponse to problems experienced in traditional marketing (Egan, 2001). As such it hascome to alleviate some of the recent criticism against marketing (Schipper, 2002).Relationship marketing may also be more suited to global marketing in whichproblems often arise due to differing marketing environments (March, 1971). Forinstance, in most Asian countries the culture is characterised by collectivism, implyingmore emphasis on personal relations (Hofstede, 1997). This has been shown to berelated to increased importance of social activities (Lai Man So and Speece, 2000).Furthermore, relationship marketing may be seen as a natural effect of the increasingamount of interaction that has characterised the industrial and particularly thepost-industrial society (Bell, 1973). As the traditional segmentation of society breaksdown, new social forms emerge and the number of people that we interact withincreases dramatically (Bell, 1978).

In the recent contributions, the challenge has been to establish relationshipmarketing as a theoretical school in its own right and not just an antithesis oftraditional marketing. While some authors request a more stringent theory, othersrecommend that relationship marketing continues to be a more flexible series ofconcepts and ideas, partly because of the differences in application between industries(Egan, 2001). For instance, in consumer markets relationship marketing is feasibleprimarily for high involvement products which involve regular interaction withconsumers (O’Malley and Tynan, 2000). According to Bruhn (2003), the maindimensions of relationship marketing are orientation towards stakeholders, decisions,time-horizons and value. Furthermore, the concepts of trust, commitment andattraction have been identified as crucial elements of relationship marketing. However,particularly the former two have been so amply recognized that they might have beenoveremphasised (O’Malley and Tynan, 2000).

Business relationships are obviously based on personal relationships betweensuppliers and customers, etc. and thus they all have a personal aspect. In the literature,metaphors are therefore often drawn to traditional, personal relationships such asmarriage (O’Malley and Tynan, 2000) or even seduction (Deighton and Grayson, 1995).However, sometimes these metaphors may have been taken too literally, and thedifferences between marketing relationships and personal relationships, such asthe asymmetrical nature of the former relationships, sometimes make theminappropriate (O’Malley and Tynan, 2000).

More recently, the concept “customer relationship management”, CRM, has becomepopular. The definition of this term, the wideness of its scope and its connection torelationship marketing vary a great deal. Some authors (Gummesson, 1999) suggestthat CRM, in its essence, is the same as relationship marketing. Others, (Xu et al., 2002)relate CRM solely to information technology and various software solutions. Since thedefinitions and usage of it differs so much between authors, we prefer to use the moregeneric term, relationship marketing.

Although relationship marketing has entered into the marketing theory in recent times,its practice is probably much older and may be closer to original modes of conductingbusiness. It is interesting to note that the original meaning of the word “kunde”, which

JMH12,4

378

means customer in German, (and thus presumably also the word “kund” in theScandinavian languages) was acquaintance, i.e. someone whom one knew personally(Schipper, 2002). This indicates that relationship marketing in fact is more ancient than themore transactional approaches, whose dominance may be limited to the era ofindustrialisation.

Marketing schools – seminal framework updatedThe common feature of the three recent strands presented above is their focus onrelations. This focus was present already in services marketing and industrialmarketing in connection with their respective empirical areas. In relationshipmarketing, this focus came to full fruition, just as the mode of interaction in the form ofrelations became the main perspective used for studying all companies. Looking backto the structure presented, based on the 12 schools (Table I), we see that the newcurrents do not straight away fit into this structure. They are definitely non-economic.Furthermore, they are obviously also interactive; but their concept of interaction goesmuch further than the previous interactive schools as it entails long-lasting, continuousrelations within which the interactions take place. Therefore, we propose amodification and an extension of the seminal framework in Table II.

In our up-dated framework of marketing schools, the economic dimension isunchanged, but the interactive dimension has been divided into three parts. Thenon-interactive dimension is also unchanged, but the interactive dimension has beenre-labelled as transactional.

We contend that the term reflects better the core idea of these schools. These schoolsdo not really focus on the interaction of marketing, but rather on the transactionstaking place, such as the exchange between buyers and sellers. In addition, the focus ofthese schools is more on interactions within a limited timeframe.

We propose an additional dimension, namely the relational dimension. The recentdevelopments of marketing schools that have emerged in the last decades – such asservices marketing, industrial marketing and relationship marketing – and with theiremphasis on sustained relations are categorised as relational.

One interesting feature of the extended framework is that there is one box – i.e. theeconomic/relational dimension – that does not hold any content (Table II). The reasonfor this might be that the recent developments that have taken place among thenon-economic schools have been absent among the economic schools. In fact, the boxprovides an extensive area of further research in marketing.

In general, the centre of attention in marketing has in recent times more resided inthe non-economic theories. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see an extension of

Non-interactive Transactional Relational

Economic Commodity Institutional Further research needed!Functional FunctionalistRegional Managerial

Non-economic Buyer behaviour Systems Services marketingActivist Social exchange Industrial marketingMacromarketing Organisational Relationship

Dynamics Marketing

Table II.An updated framework of

marketing schools

A seminalframework

379

the economic schools into more relational thinking. The school that is closest toachieving this is probably the institutional school with its emphasis on lastinginstitutions. Developing this theory into a school in which relational aspects areintegrated should be an interesting challenge for scholars in the economic disciplines.

Concluding reflectionsWe have re-visited the development of marketing from its early practice and its firsttrembling steps towards becoming an academic discipline. A seminal frameworkcontaining old and modern marketing schools was re-visited. We finished bypresenting the three most influential recent additions of marketing schools and proposean integration of them into the seminal framework by Sheth et al. (1988). We contendthat it contributes to integrate these recent developments with the previous ones.Furthermore, it reveals a white spot in the research efforts taking place in themarketing discipline. This is a substantial field of further research that may focus on acombination of economic and relational dimensions of marketing.

References

Alderson, W. (1957), Marketing Behavior and Executive Action; A Functionalist Approach toMarketing Theory, Richard D. Irwin, Inc., Homewood, IL.

Alderson, W. (1965), Dynamic Marketing Behavior: A Functionalist Theory of Marketing, RichardD. Irwin, Inc., Homewood, IL.

Anderson, J.C, Hakansson, H. and Johanson, J. (1994), “Dyadic Business Relationships within aBusiness Network Context”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 58 No. 4, pp. 1-15.

Asubonteng, P., McCleary, K.J. and Swan, J.E. (1996), “SERVQUAL revisited: a critical review ofservice quality”, Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 10 No. 6, pp. 62-81.

Bartels, R. (1976), The History of Marketing Thought, 2nd ed., Grid, Columbus, OH.

Bell, D. (1973), The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting, BasicBooks, New York, NY.

Bell, D. (1978), The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, Basic Books, New York, NY.

Berry, L.L. and Parasuraman, A. (1993), “Building a new academic field – the case of servicesmarketing”, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 69 No. 1, pp. 13-60.

Booms, B.H. and Bitner, M.J. (1982), “Marketing strategies and organization structures for servicefirms”, in Donnelly, J.H. and George, W.R. (Eds), Marketing of Services, AmericanMarketing Association, Chicago, IL, pp. 47-51.

Borden, N.H. (1942), Economic Effects of Advertising, Richard D. Irwin, Inc., Chicago, IL.

Borden, N.H. (1964), “The concept of the marketing mix”, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 4No. 2, pp. 2-7.

Breyer, R.F. (1934), The Marketing Institution, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, NY.

Brown, S.W., Fisk, R.P. and Bitner, M.J. (1994), “The development and emergence of servicesmarketing thought”, International Journal of Service Industry Management, Vol. 5 No. 1,pp. 21-48.

Bruhn, M. (2003), Relationship Marketing, Management of Customer Relationships, PearsonEducation Ltd, Harlow.

Butler, R.S. (1923), Marketing and Merchandising, Alexander Hamilton Institute, New York, NY.

JMH12,4

380

Buttle, F. (1996), “SERVQUAL: review, critique, research agenda”, European Journal ofMarketing, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 8-32.

Church, R. and Clark, C. (2003), “Purposive strategy or serendipity? Development anddiversification in three consumer product companies, 1918-1939: J. & J. Colman, Reckitt &Sons and Lever Bros./Unilever”, in Church, R. and Godley, A. (Eds), The Emergence ofModern Marketing, Frank Cass and Co. Ltd, London.

Converse, P.D. (1930), The Elements of Marketing, Prentice-Hall, Inc., New York, NY.

Converse, P.D. and Huegy, H. (1940), The Elements of Marketing, Prentice-Hall, Inc., New York,NY.

Copeland, M.T. (1923), “The relation of consumers’ buying habits to marketing methods”,Harvard Business Review, Vol. 1, pp. 282-9.

Culliton, J.W. (1948), The Management of Marketing Costs, Andover Press, Ltd, Andover.

Cunningham, W.H. and Cunningham, I.C.M. (1988), “Stanley C. Hollander, the scholar behindmarketing and retail theory”, in Nevett, T. and Fullerton, R.A. (Eds), Historical Perspectivesin Marketing, Essays in Honor of Stanley C. Hollander, Lexington books, Lexington.

Deighton, J. and Grayson, K. (1995), “Marketing and seduction: building exchange relationshipsby managing social consensus”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 660-76.

Donabedian, A. (1966), “Evaluating the quality of medical care”, Milbank Memorial FundQuarterly, Vol. 44, pp. 166-206.

Easton, G. (1992), “Industrial networks: a review”, in Axelsson, B. and Easton, G. (Eds), IndustrialNetworks – A New Reality, Routledge, London.

Edvardsson, B. (2005), “Service quality: beyond cognitive assessment”, Managing ServiceQuality, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 127-31.

Egan, J. (2001), Relationship Marketing, Exploring Relational Strategies in Marketing, PearsonEducation Ltd, Harlow.

Eiglier, P. and Langeard, E. (1993), Servuction, le marketing des services, Ediscience International,Paris.

Engwall, L. (1992), Mercury Meets Minerva, Business Studies and Higher Education, the SwedishCase, Pergamon Press, Oxford.

Frey, A.W. (1961), Advertising, Ronald Press, New York, NY.

Fisk, R.P., Brown, S.W. and Bitner, M.J. (1993), “Tracking the evolution of the services marketingliterature”, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 69 No. 1, pp. 69-103.

Ford, D. (2004), “The IMP group and international marketing”, International Marketing Review,Vol. 21 No. 2, pp. 139-41.

Fullbrook, E.S. (1940), “The functional concept in marketing”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 4,pp. 229-37.

Gronroos, C. (1979), Marketing of Services, Akademilitteratur/Marketing Technology Centre,Stockholm.

Gronroos, C. (1984), “A service quality model and its marketing implications”, European Journalof Marketing, Vol. 18 No. 4, pp. 36-45.

Gronroos, C. (1990), Service Management and Marketing: Managing the Moment of Truth inService Competition, Maxwell Macmillan, Singapore.

Gronroos, C. (1994), “From marketing mix to relationship marketing: towards a paradigm shift inmarketing”, Management Decision, Vol. 32 No. 2, pp. 4-20.

A seminalframework

381

Gronroos, C. (1995), “Relationship marketing: the strategy continuum”, Journal of the Academy ofMarketing Science, Vol. 234, pp. 252-4.

Gronroos, C. (2000), “Relationship marketing. The Nordic school perspective”, in Sheth, J.N. andParvatiyar, A. (Eds), Handbook of Relationship Marketing, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA,pp. 95-117.

Gummesson, E. (1991), “Truths and myths in service quality”, International Journal of ServiceIndustry Management, Vol. 2 No. 3, pp. 7-16.

Gummesson, E. (1998), “Productivity, quality and relationship marketing in service operations”,International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 4-15.

Gummesson, E. (1999), Total Relationship Marketing, Butterworth-Heinemann, London.

Gustafson, J.F. and Ricard, R. (1964), “How to determine levels of required customer service”,Transportation & Distribution Management, June, pp. 34-7.

Hakansson, H. (Ed.) (1982), International Marketing and Purchaisng of Industrial Goods – AnInteraction Approach, Wiley, New York, NY.

Hakansson, H. and Johanson, J. (1992), “A model of industrial networks”, in Axelsson, B. andEaston, G. (Eds), Industrial Networks – A New Reality, Routledge, London.

Hakansson, H. and Ostberg, C. (1975), “Industrial marketing – an organizational problem?”,Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 4 Nos 1/2, pp. 113-23.

Hakansson, H. and Snehota, I. (1995), Developing Relationships in Business Networks, Routledge,London.

Hakansson, H. and Snehota, I. (2000), “The IMP perspective. Assets and liabilities of businessrelationships”, in Sheth, J.N. and Parvatiyar, A. (Eds), Handbook of RelationshipMarketing, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 69-93.

Hakansson, H. and Wootz, B. (1975), Foretags Inkopsbeteende, Studentlitteratur, Lund.

Hallen, L. (1982), “International industrial purchasing”, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, StudiaOeconomiae Negotiorum 13 (dissertation), Uppsala.

Hallen, L. and Johanson, J. (Eds) (1989), Advances in International Marketing, JAI Press,Greenwich, CT.

Hammarkvist, K-O., Hakansson, H. and Mattsson, L-G. (1982), Marknadsforing forKonkurrenskraft, IVA, MTC och Liber, Stockholm.

Hofstede, G. (1997), Culture and Organisations, Software of the Mind, McGraw-Hill, New York,NY.

Hollander, S.C. (1959), Explorations in Retailing, MSU Business Studies, East Lansing, MI.

Hutchinson, W.H. Jr and Stolle, J.F. (1968), “How to manage customer service”, Harvard BusinessReview, November/December, pp. 85-8.

Jansson, H. (1982), “Interfirm linkages in a developing economy – the case of Swedish firms inIndia”, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Oeconomiae Negotiorum 14 (dissertation),Uppsala University, Uppsala.

Jansson, H. (1994), Industrial Products. A Guide to the International Marketing Economics Model,International Business Press, New York, NY.

Johnston, R. (2004), “Towards a better understanding of service excellence”, Managing ServiceQuality, Vol. 14 Nos 2/3, pp. 129-33.

Judd, V.C. (1987), “Differentiate with the 5th P: people”, Industrial Marketing Management,Vol. 16, pp. 241-7.

Keith, R.J. (1960), “The marketing revolution”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 24, pp. 35-8.

JMH12,4

382

Kotler, P. (1986), “Megamarketing”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 64, pp. 117-24.

Lai Man So, S. and Speece, M.W. (2000), “Perceptions of relationship marketing among accountmanagers of commercial banks in a Chinese environment”, International Journal of BankMarketing, Vol. 18 No. 7, pp. 315-27.

Lazer, W. and Kelley, E.J. (1962), Managerial Marketing: Perspectives and Viewpoints, RichardD. Irwin, Inc., Homewood, IL.

Lovelock, C. and Gummesson, E. (2004), “Whither services marketing? In search of a newparadigm and fresh perspectives”, Journal of Service Research, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 20-41.

McCarthy, E.J. (1960), Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach, Richard D. Irwin, Inc.,Homewood, IL.

McCarthy, E.J. (1964), Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach, Richard D. Irwin, Inc.,Homewood, IL.

McGarry, E.D. (1950), “Some functions of marketing reconsidered”, in Reavis, C. and Alderson,W. (Eds), Theory in Marketing, Richard D. Irwin, Inc., Chicago, IL, pp. 263-79.

McKitterick, J.B. (1957), “What is the marketing management concept”, in Bass, F. (Ed.),Frontiers of Marketing Thought and Action, American Marketing Association, Chicago,IL, pp. 71-82.

March, R.M. (1971), “Some constraints on adaptive marketing by foreign consumer goods firmsin Japan”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 11 No. 7, pp. 491-8.

Mattsson, L.G. and Johanson, J. (2005), “Discovering market networks”, European Journal ofMarketing, Vol. 40 Nos 3/4, pp. 259-74.

O’Malley, L. and Tynan, C. (2000), “Relationship marketing in consumer markets: rhetoric orreality?”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 34 No. 7, pp. 797-815.

Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V.A. and Berry, L.L. (1985), “A conceptual model of service qualityand its implications for future research”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 49, pp. 41-50.

Parlin, C.C. (1912), “Consumer goods classification”, Journal of Marketing, mentioned inGardner E.H. (1945), Vol. 9, pp. 275-6.

Pilbeam, P. (2003), “Madame Tussaud and the business of wax: marketing to the middle classes”,in Church, R. and Godley, A. (Eds), The Emergence of Modern Marketing, Frank Cass andCo. Ltd, London.

Rathmell, J.M. (1966), “What is meant by services?”, Journal of Marketing, October, pp. 32-6.

Rathmell, J.M. (1974), Marketing in the Service Sector, Winthrop, Cambridge, MA.

Rhoades, E.L. (1927), Introductory Readings in Marketing, A.W. Shaw Company, Chicago, IL.

Roest, H. and Pieters, R. (1997), “The nomological net of perceived service quality”, InternationalJournal of Service Industry Management, Vol. 8 No. 4, pp. 336-51.

Romilla (Robert Millar) (1916), Reklame-laere, Aktietrykkeriet, Trondhejm.

Schipper, F. (2002), “The relevance of Horkheimer’s view of the customer”, European Journal ofMarketing, Vol. 36 Nos 1/2, pp. 23-35.

Seth, N., Deshmukh, S.G. and Vrat, P. (2005), “Service quality models: a review”, InternationalJournal of Quality & Reliability Management, Vol. 22 No. 9, pp. 913-49.

Shaw, A. (1912), “Some problems in market distribution”, Quartely Journal of Economics, Vol. 26,pp. 708-65.

Shaw, A.W. (1916), An Approach to Business Problems, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,MA.

A seminalframework

383

Sheth, J.N. and Parvatiyar, A. (Eds) (2000), Handbook of Relationship Marketing, Sage, ThousandOaks, CA.

Sheth, J.N., Gardner, D.M. and Garrett, D.E. (1988), Marketing Theory: Evolution and Evaluation,Wiley, New York, NY.

Shostack, G.L. (1997), “Breaking free from product marketing”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 41,pp. 73-80.

Stephenson, P.R. and Willet, R.P. (1969), “Determinants of buyer response to physicaldistribution service”, Journal of Marketing Research, p. 279.

Vanderblue, H.B. (1921), “The functional approach to the study of marketing”, Journal of PoliticalEconomy, Vol. 29, pp. 676-83.

Weld, L.D.H. (1916), The Marketing of Farm Products, The Macmillan Company, New York, NY.

Weld, L.D.H. (1917), “Marketing functions and mercantile organization”, American EconomicReview, Vol. 7, pp. 306-18.

Westerfield, R.B. (1915), “Middlemen in English business: particularly between 1660 and 1760”,Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences,Vol. 19, Yale UniversityPress, New Haven, CT, pp. 111-445.

Xu, Y., Yen, D.C., Lin, B. and Chou, D.C. (2002), “Adopting customer relationship managementtechnology”, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 102 No. 8, pp. 442-52.

Zeithaml, V.A., Parasuraman, A. and Berry, L.L. (1990), Delivering Quality Service, BalancingCustomer Perceptions and Expectations, The Free Press, New York, NY.

JMH12,4

384

To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: reprints@emeraldinsight.comOr visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints