This chapter is based upon the development of two lines of argument, one concerning the nature of marketing as a socially located practice and the other marketing as a managerial discipline and nascent profession. There are, houever, parallels in that both of these
processes are forms of commercially regulated exchange uhich, it uill be argued, contribute significantly to the negotiation of structure uithin contemporary society. The discussion uill shou that uhilst marketing theorists are ill at ease uith these and other aspects of consumption, there are facets of anthropology uhich can offer insights into the importance of both goods and patterns of exchange uithin a society that is founded upon mass production, mass employment and mass consumption.
It uould not be hard to infer from marketing literature uhich avoids those aspects of business uhich contributed to the failure of the 'Edsel* that marketing executives manage the fulfilment of society's needs and uants uhilst keeping commercial organisations as healthy as possible. It is, after all, a tenet of consumer economics that more goods means a higher standard of living and that uhilst everyone has disposable income the competition for it is so fierce that marketing expertise is needed in order that an organisation might maintain an edge over its rivals. The entire 'Consumer* revolution, led by Ralph Nader's 'Raiders' and embodied in 'Uhich' magazine, seems based on the assumption that these aims are not urong but mismanaged. Hence the argument is aluays geared touards a definition of superior electric toothbrushes rather
than a questioning of their ultimate value given the resources consumed in their production and use. This latter point is a major plank in a body of criticism uhich has become the philosophy of 'Ecologists' or the 'Green Party'. Although uell intentioned, often justified, but clumsy and naive, this critique offered no real alternative for society at large.1’2
"bJhat the Neu Left lacks, of course, is a practical, comprehensive solution ... The radicals knou uhat must come doun, but not
uhat should go up. In this matter, houever, they are no
different from past revolutionaries, even the most successful." 131
’’You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right. that we were winning ...
And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of
inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our
energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting
- on our side or theirs, ti/e had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave ...
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
Consumer economics, hence marketing, remains a commercial principle and a centre around which managerial expertise is grouped.
The vitality of Nader’s assault upon General Motors and the freshness of the ’Ecologist* critique fueled my reservations about the nature of marketing as a discipline. This disquiet over the nature
of marketing managers and the implication of at least some ’professional’ standards was encouraged by the work of Ezra Mishan (1967) coupled with my experiences in market research for a supplier of brewers requisites.
Mishan provided the idea that industry should be directly
responsible for not only those aspects of production which have become traditionally accepted as legitimate; items such as labour, raw materials and transport, but also for the other more indirect costs of that
industry. Thus a company responsible for the extraction of minerals, for example, would be held liable for making good the damage caused by mining those elements. The company would also be responsible for the side
effects of manufacture so that the removal of harmful waste from factory effluent and the introduction of precautionary works practices to safe guard employees* health would add to the final cost of the product. Mishan argued that the standard costing techniques were misleading and if
society at large was faced with the true cost of a product it would not sell. He expected the impetus of higher standards to reawaken
industrial interest in good rather than adequate design. There is also, throughout Mishan's work, an assumption that such a costing system might better reflect industrial morality than money profits. It is implicit in this analysis that the makers of steel do not have an inalienable
right to pump Sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, thereby encouraging the corrosion of entire cities. Similarly, if those processes using crippling or carcinogenic chemicals were to include the costs of proper safeguards and good pensions in the final price, some cheaper
alternative uould soon be the norm*
Houever, another side to this is described by Beckerman (1976)^ in a rebuttal of such criticisms*
There is no doubt that economic grouth is the only uay that the poorest tuo-thirds of the uorld's population can eliminate the pollution and environmental degradation that aluays goes hand-in-hand uith poverty”
Beckerman may be seen as essentially sympathetic to those /
arguments developed from Gist (1971) later in this chapter. The inference may be draun as Beckerman appears equally convinced of the nature of economic development yet prepared to admit that commercial