Our Obsolete Marketing Mentality: George Fisk, Meet Karl Polanyi

Abstract

Marketing in general can have greater influence if a new, yet old, perspective on marketing is adopted—something akin to the original orientation of marketing. Adopting George Fisk’s definition of marketing and marrying it with notions derived from the institutional economist Karl Polanyi is proposed. The histories of marketing thought and of institutional economics are reviewed to demonstrate their affinity and similar origins. Fisk’s conceptualization of marketing as societies’ provisioning systems is shown to correspond with Polanyi’s conceptualization of economies as instituted processes, admitting more than the market and the state as ways economies have historically and cross-culturally integrated with society. The obsolete marketing mentality is that marketers, including macromarketers, are overly fixated on the market and ignore or overlook alternatives. The Fisk/Polanyi orientation will attract macromarketers interested in marketing and development, critical marketing, sustainability, alternative economies, and those interested in the long-term prospects of macromarketing. Adopting this old, but new, framework will connect the past with the future, permit macromarketers make a mark on a larger intellectual landscape and serve to invite scholars in this larger landscape to engage with macromarketing.

Firms’ Sustainability Marketing Commitment: The Roles of Chief Marketing Officers’ Future Focus and Prosocial Motivation

“…An investigation that aims to compare and contrast the effect of CEOs’ characteristics on firms’ sustainability marketing commitment is another route for future research. Also, as Benton (2021) suggested marketers, including macromarketers, should “intentionally engage with a larger intellectual community of scholars and encourage that larger intellectual community to engage with macromarketing” (p. 99), especially macroeconomists. Future research on sustainability marketing should be a product of such a collaboration to achieve more useful results to the society.…”

Public Administration as One of the Forms for Exercising State Power

“…In addition, we emphasize that Ukraine has recently chosen the path to unification with the developed countries of Western and Central Europe and, accordingly, to join the European Union and the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO). The result is a slow but consistent tendency to reduce the negative impact of criminal, corrupt and oligarchic elements on the aspects of Ukraine's domestic and foreign policy and on the system of strategic government decision-making (Raymond, 2020). In addition, individuals associated with Ukraine's old oligarchic and criminal, authoritarian system have begun and continue to gradually lose both their political influence and their largely illegally acquired assets.…”

Not WEIRD at all! Towards More Pluralistic Economies and Sustainable Livelihoods

“…Critiques of market reification are nothing new (e.g., Benton 2021 and Carter's 2019 historical overviews; Fisk 1974; Handy 1998; Hart 2007). Macromarketers offer relatively gentle admonishments (e.g., Varey 2010) and stronger talk of ‘neoliberal beasts unleashed’ (Dholakia, Ozgun, and Atik, 2020, p. 868).…”

“…Collective actions are regulated by norms, values, and understandings (i.e., trust and relationships) rather than legalized and financialized exchanges (Fisker 2022; Gibson-Graham and Dombroski 2020). The DEP is complementary to views of marketing as an adaptive societal provisioning system, acknowledging that economies are complex systems of resource flows and social relations, embedded in institutions and society (Benton 2021; Jafari et al 2022; Layton 2009). The DEP also challenges the hegemonic power of capital centrism, reinforcing macromarketing critique.…”