Towards a Marketing Renaissance: Challenging Underlying Assumptions

Marketing is commonly considered to be in crisis, losing credibility and in need of reform. Among the many attempts to solve its predicament, one question seems not to be asked: Could there be underlying foundational assumptions that are outdated, and which hinder marketing from being re-invented to fit emergent business and societal challenges? This article demonstrates that marketing is steered by several underlying foundational assumptions, all of which have remained implicit. A dominating focus on activities, as opposed to a discussion of what marketing should be as a phenomenon, constrains marketing in the steadfast grip of tradition. To enable a formulation of marketing as a phenomenon, this paper scrutinises these implicit assumptions and proposes an alternative set of foundational assumptions. Making firms or other institutions meaningful to their customers or other stakeholders with the aim of creating attraction is suggested as a marketing phenomenon. Finally, it is demonstrated that marketing as meaningfulness has important and far-reaching consequences, providing opportunities to develop and reform marketing to make it more relevant and inclusive in the emergent business and societal environment.