Page 25 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

18 The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

Enis said, “If exchange activity occurs, then it should not be ignored
simply because it is difficult to measure. In short, the test of the broadness
of a concept should be its broadness in explaining the existence or behav-
ior of phenomena in a given situation . . . marketing concepts should be
employed where they are useful” (Enis, 1973, p. 58). This definitional
emphasis was also taken up by Kotler in a 1972 article entitled “A Generic
Concept of Marketing,” in which he argued that the most fundamental es-
sence of the field is in the transaction (Kotler, 1972).
Other scholars have weighed in. James Hutton (2002) has argued that
marketing philosophies, strategies, and tactics are misapplied when they

• focus on giving people what they want at the expense of what they need;
• use the term “customer” when “citizen” is more appropriate; or
• undermine traditional institutions such as religious organizations.

However, leaders in the traditional marketing discipline were clearly
willing to explore broader applications and blend it with other disciplines
(Rothschild, 1999). This was evidenced at the outset by the range of pos-
sible applications included by the editors in the Journal of Marketing issue
in which the original “broadening” article appeared, including recycling,
health care, fundraising, and family planning.
In 2003, when Wilkie and Moore conducted their landmark overview
of the “4 Eras” of marketing thought and practice, they argued for an ad-
ditional factor lending support to the broadened definition and to the sub-
sequent involvement of marketing scholars in nonprofit issues. This was
the broad sweep of social unrest affecting the world population in the sec-
ond half of the 1960s and into the 1970s (Wilkie & Moore, 2003). The
Vietnam War, urban unrest, and other social challenges led many market-
ing scholars to question basic notions of responsibility, social progress,
fairness, and the like that can be involved in—or affected by—marketing
practice.
In the end, the Kotler/Levy/Zaltman broadening breakthrough had the
liberating impact of freeing up marketing scholars and researchers within
a traditional discipline to carry out research and propose best practices to
corporations, nonprofits, and governmental organizations with the goal of
improving social welfare in ways that might or might not involve eco-
nomic components. Indeed, William Nickels found that by the early
1970s, more than 90 percent of marketing educators surveyed believed
that nonbusiness organizations do carry out marketing activities, and
many of those activities go beyond economic transactions involving prod-
ucts and services (Nickels, 1974).