Marketing does not take place in isolation. This section outlines the wide range of contexts which effect and are affected by marketing activities. Many of these are outside the organizations undertaking marketing such as the society, culture and the media, and others are inside the organization, where marketing fits, who does it. Another question is what are markets? They can be viewed in different ways and which perspective is chosen fundamentally affects how marketing operations are analysed and conducted. This section also reviews the values and history of marketing itself which lie behind the activities that today are undertaken in its name.
This book is about marketing and marketing is about markets, so it is important to be clear what a market actually is. And this is not as straightforward as it appears, because there are many views of what characterizes a market, differences between academic subjects such as economics and psychology, differences between management disciplines such as marketing and strategy, and even, as we shall see below, different views of markets within marketing. This is separate from different views people have as to whether markets are good or bad things (see Marketing values), it concerns the alternative perspectives or ways of looking at markets taken by authors in marketing.
In this chapter four views of markets are outlined:
Markets as exchange
Markets as competition
Markets as networks
Markets as information.
Any market...
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