Three systems underpinning marketing behavior

Abstract

The new marketing systems paradigm proposed by El-Ansary, Shaw, and Lazer in their thoughtful AMS Review Article is taken to heart herein by reframing disparate pieces of scholarship and emerging research in the field through a systems lens. Three systems are proposed to undergird marketing theories, thought, and behavior: (1) a purposive-driven, goal-directed behavior systems point of view that the actors contemplating, entering, engaging, and resolving marketing exchanges undergo, (2) biological systems (neuroscience, endocrinological, and genetic) grounding marketing exchanges, and (3) cooperative and competitive systems in which goal-directed behavior and biological systems are realized in an integrative way. It is straining, however, to characterize the state of the field as constituting an identity crisis in my opinion, because the majority of marketing scholars, practitioners, and students do not appear to be concerned with or even aware of such a crisis in that the history of marketing thought does not interest them. Perhaps once the field moves from descriptive frameworks to testable theories, and experiences an integration of ideas potentially building towards more comprehensive theories in marketing, we will see hope for a general theory of marketing.