Path Dependency in Marketing Systems

Abstract

Path dependency in marketing systems occurs when what has happened at an earlier time affects the possible outcomes of a sequence of events occurring at a later point in time (Sewell 1996). Unlike the wider category of all social systems, in marketing systems path dependency is innate in the evolutionary dynamics underlying the formation and growth of a marketing system, beginning with the historical framing of choices made by all participants, generating, through self-organization and emergence, four complex social mechanisms - delivery systems, stakeholder action fields, technology evolution systems and value change fields. These complex social mechanisms interact over time generating marketing system outcomes that feedback continually into participant choices. The paper argues that all marketing systems, whether micro, meso or macro in scale and level, exhibit path dependence, and explores the implications of this finding. The paper identifies three ways of approaching path dependence in marketing systems - a narrative, partial and strong approach. It concludes that in a specific marketing systems setting all three approaches complement each other, the first establishing in narrative terms what happened, the second identifying the key path dependencies in a partial analysis, and finally, the third, drawing on a detailed or strong understanding of the causal dynamics at work to provide insights needed to extend theories of marketing system formation and growth and to provide the foundations for policy prescription. The occurrence of path dependency in all marketing systems and the complementary nature of the three distinctive approaches are the two major contributions of this paper.