Democratising Marketing or Why Marketing Must Be Imbibed as a Culture

Abstract

The world is spinning faster today.

The three forces accelerating the spin are the democratisation of technology, of finance and of information. This has led to falling entry barriers and increasing commoditisation of goods. Customer Knowledge and customisation are the only differentiating pillars left. Since information is easily available the key resource is 'understanding', which in turn implies that companies must now devote their key people to understanding the customer. This in turn implies every individual in a company must become an agent for the customer and act and think on his behalf, that every individual inculcate a marketing orientation and that firms imbibe this marketing culture.

But, when the world spun slower, Marketing was not considered this important.

This story is the story of the progress of marketing, from once when it wasn't even important enough to warrant a department to today when it has become the sine qua non of corporate existence.

Modern corporations evolved only after the industrial revolution and the linkages between the different functions and the importance attached to each of them were and are a function of the scarcity equation in the economy. Over time this scarcity equation has changed and so have the linkages and relative importance of functions. This paper attempts to examine these relationships and explain why the current relationships dictate that companies imbibe marketing as a culture.

Keywords: Marketing as a culture, history, democratising