The first edition of Marketing Theory: A Student Text first appeared in 2000 in
order to fulfil the need for an advanced text to be used in capstone courses in
marketing by students who had studied the subject in some depth, to pull together
and consolidate the principal ideas, concepts and theories that underpin the discipline.
A selection of 18 chapters was seen as meeting this need and proved to be
very successful, with numerous reprints since its first appearance.
While many of the key ideas and core concepts remain unchanged, the discipline
of marketing has continued to evolve and for this reason we have produced
a new, revised and extended second edition of this successful text. The authors of
some chapters contributed to the original edition, whereas others are completely
new.
Our perspective is that marketing does not depend on a ‘pure’ or single disciplinary
base. Instead it may be regarded as an applied social science or synthetic
discipline in the original sense of the process or result of building up separate
elements, especially ideas, into a connected whole, especially into a theory or
system. It follows that if one wishes to be qualified to practice the profession of
marketing then one should know and understand the sources of the original ideas
and theories on which it is founded.
For students following a marketing degree programme, marketing theory as a
distinct subject or module is generally taught at the final-year level of undergraduate
marketing degrees and on taught postgraduate programmes such as the MBA
and MSc in Marketing, often as part of the methodological and theoretical preparation
for students undertaking marketing dissertations.
Marketing Theory, second edition, is intended as an authoritative overview of the
theoretical foundations and current status of thinking on topics central to the discipline
and practice of marketing. It comprises original contributions from an international
panel of experts on their individual subject areas. In doing so it brings
together in a single text a comprehensive review of the major sub-fields of the discipline
which otherwise could only be found by specific reference to the literature of
those sub-fields or from major reference texts written for advanced academics and
PhD level scholars, involving considerable effort and expense. While clear and
concise in its presentation, every chapter is supported by extensive references
enabling further in-depth research into the subject matter of the individual
chapters.