Abstract
The article suggests adopting a pluralism methodological approach in marketing science. Using controversy over marketing to nonmarketers problem paper traces evolution of the issue in context of research methodology and discusses alternative methodological approaches and research paradigms.
Highlights
Marketing to nonmarketers controversy the concept of marketing in the nonprofit and public sectors was initially criticized in the marketing literature as confusing [1,2], it eventually became widely embraced by marketing scholars and consultants [3]
In the marketing literature the pluralist tradition has been represented by the work of Monieson [9,33], and Arndt [19] whose philosophical orientation relies heavily on the work of Gutlung [17]
Pluralists seek to break free from the paradigmatic provincialism which they perceive characterizes current marketing science
Summary
Marketing to nonmarketers controversy the concept of marketing in the nonprofit and public sectors was initially criticized in the marketing literature as confusing [1,2], it eventually became widely embraced by marketing scholars and consultants [3]. Lovelock and Weinberg [4] noted that by the end of the 1970s there was no longer any serious controversy among marketing scholars about the appropriateness of the concept for the public and nonprofit sectors. Roberto [5], an active proponent of marketing, observed: “Marketing’s recent and growing participation in public sector management has received a bipolar love-hate evaluation.". Those commentators, who are critical of marketing, do partially recognize the need of public administrators to adopt new management techniques to deal with the prevailing environment of lessgovernment-more-user-fees. The opponents’ position was perhaps best articulated by Walsh [11] who suggested the need to redefine public marketing “...if it is to be public service marketing rather a pale imitation of a private sector approach within the public sector.”
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