BİR DÜŞÜNCE OLARAK PAZARLAMADAN BİLİM OLARAK PAZARLAMAYA: PAZARLAMA BİLİMİNİN KAPSAMI, ÖZELLİKLERİ VE YÖNTEMİ

Abstract

Since its appearance in economics as a distribution matter, marketing has been discussed whether it is an art or a science. Although marketing as a thought goes as far back as approximately a century ago, its existence ontologically coincides with the similar timeline of the appearance of mankind on earth. While practitioners and some scholars with limited view of marketing are inclined to see marketing as an art, scholars and practitioners with non-profit/macro/positive perspective acknowledge marketing as ontologically, epistemologically, and methodologically an original science. The main purpose of this study is to raise awareness about scientific nature of marketing and discuss on its scope, properties, and methodology. In the context of this study, it has been emphasized that marketing is a science of exchanges which is built upon the teachings of the four pillars of social sciences, namely sociology, psychology, eco-nomics and anthropology. Marketing aims to understand, explain, predict and, to a certain extent, control exchange behaviors of humans in the real-world conditions and to bring theory and practice together. If marketing is separated from practice, it would diverge from reality and turn to a blackboard science which produces synthetic knowledge that fails to provide benefits to businesses and society, at large. This is why, marketing has been evaluated as an original and synthesized applied science in this paper.