Critical Marketing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Critical Marketing - Essay Example An examination of this and other contemporary marketing practices reveals emergent issues that deserve closer inspection in the area of marketing as a discipline. A number of these have already attracted academic investigation but the most important include the advent of the so-called relationship marketing and the increasing focus on ethics and social responsibility. There is, hence, an additional paradigm shift, which is best examined through the critical marketing perspective. Traditional Marketing The traditional marketing mix is composed of the so-called 4Ps, which was introduced by McCarthy back in the 1960s. This doctrine explains how marketing strategies, plans and approaches are designed according to four marketing elements: product, price, place (distribution channel); and, promotion (marketing communication). According to Barker and Angelopulo (2005), the fundamental task of marketing is to combine these four elements into a marketing program so that efficiency in dealing with customers is achieved. (p139) For several decades, this traditional marketing mix, dominated marketing practices because it is aligned with the core marketing principle of consumer-centrism. By 1990s, however, new marketing paradigms began to surface. The usefulness of the 4Ps became suspect as new variables emerge, calling for new marketing models. Day and Montgomery (1999) explained that â€Å"with growing reservation about the validity or the usefulness of the Four Ps concept and its lack of recognition of marketing as an innovating and adaptive force, the Four Ps now are regarded as merely handy framework.† (p3) The development stemmed from the schools and lines of thoughts that were brought about by new practices such as relationship marketing, quality management, market orientation, supply and value chain management, resource management, and networks. (Vargo and Lusch 2004, p1) Specific examples that demonstrate the changing face of marketing today is how digital t echnology revolutionizes the way people behave, interact with each other and their environment and consume products. Social networking websites are cases in point. They best represent the emergence of the so-called digital community through the Internet, which serve as some form of online version of society wherein people live their digital lifestyles: wherein they talk with each other, forge relationships, buy their needs, look for guides and directions, and so forth. These websites introduced new marketing channels. In consideration of the previously cited factors, Vargo and Lusch were able to posit how contemporary marketing has become fragmented. What happened was that the traditional conception of marketing has to be set aside in order to accommodate the requirements and challenges such as those posed by the addition of services and other intangible variables in the marketing practice as the marketplace included ideas and cultural artifacts as products. This is in addition to t he diversity in the roles of several actors and stakeholders in the development process such as institutions, ideologies, and the empowerment consumers. The dynamics of these new changes and how they call for new marketing models are best explained by a critical analysis of marketing. Critical Marketing According to French et al. (2010), critical marketing or the critical analysis