An Exploration of Marketing's Impacts on Society: A Perspective Linked to Democracy
Published 11/1/2008
Author: Katherine E. Jocz and John A. Quelch
View this contentExecutive Summary
For a field that faces sweeping critiques of its practices, marketing has paid surprisingly little attention to its larger impacts on society. With a few significant exceptions, practicing marketers and scholars have confined their analyses of marketing effects to product markets and brands, or firms and managers, or households and individual consumers. This essay proposes a new perspective for exploring the impact of the modern aggregate marketing system on consumer welfare and society, one that borrows from political theory. Specifically, the authors compare the benefits marketing delivers to consumers with the conditions required for representative democracy. Democracies depend on informed citizens participating in the political process and making choices freely among political alternatives. Democracies promote the material welfare of all citizens and allow all citizens to be included in political decision making. Similar to democracy, marketing is grounded in the concept of individual sovereignty. Marketing has the potential to deliver six core benefits to society that are remarkably similar to the conditions for democracy. First, good marketers give consumers information. Second, they offer consumers choice. Third, they engage consumers, and they earn their interest and loyalty. Fourth, most marketers seek to be inclusive, to bring good quality and innovation to the masses. Fifth, a marketer’s success depends on a fair exchange occurring with a customer. Sixth, fair exchange of value entails subsequent consumption of goods and services that satisfy needs and improve the quality of life.
The essay argues that this perspective encompasses a broader range of benefits than is usually considered in the marketing literature and could provide a possible template for evaluating marketing actions. The authors demonstrate that viewing marketing as being democratic is consistent with the historical evolution of marketing and with existing definitions of marketing. Linking marketing to political science begins to connect outcomes for individuals with outcomes for society. Although there undoubtedly are marketers motivated by greed alone, those who desire to do some good can use the benefits framework to assess the social impact of their actions and of marketing as a whole. Drawing attention to the democratic aspects and social impacts of marketing could raise aspirations to generate favorable societal outcomes—for example, informed choice by consumers. The approach also lends itself to policy discussions and future research on the relationships among the three primary actors in the marketing system: consumers, marketers, and government.
A question, then, is, Does marketing foster democracy? Currently, marketing is flourishing in nondemocratic China and Russia, but democratic India suffers from an inadequate marketing infrastructure. In the long run, however, there may be a symbiotic relationship between democratic political institutions and strong civil society institutions, such as marketing, because the billions of mutually satisfying exchanges that occur daily in the commercial marketplace build the trust and respect that hold society together.
Biography
Katherine E. Jocz is a research associate at Harvard Business School. Previously, she was senior director of networks and relationships and thought leader at Marketspace, a Monitor Group company. Formerly, she was vice president of research operations at the Marketing Science Institute. She has served on the editorial review board of Journal of Marketing, the board of directors of the Association for Consumer Research, committees for the annual Marketing and Public Policy conference, and the U.S. Census Bureau Advisory Committee. Her publications include articles and books on marketing management and the discipline of marketing; the most recent being Greater Good: How Good Marketing Makes for Better Democracy (with John Quelch).
John A. Quelch is Senior Associate Dean and Lincoln Filene Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Professor Quelch is the author, coauthor or editor of 20 books, including Greater Good: How Good Marketing Makes for Better Democracy (2008), Business Solutions for the Global Poor: Creating Social and Economic Value (2007), and The New Global Brands (2006). He is a nonexecutive director of the leading marketing services company WPP Group plc and of Pepsi Bottling Group. Professor Quelch has been a consultant, seminar leader ,and speaker for firms, industry associations, and government agencies in more than 50 countries. He holds degrees from Oxford University (BA and MA), the University of Pennsylvania (MBA), the Harvard School of Public Health (MS), and Harvard Business School (DBA). His weekly blog on marketing issues may be found at www.quelchblog.com.
Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Volume 27, Number 2, Fall 2008
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