Marketing communication: principles and practice

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Table 1.3
Objections to established textbook versions of marketing
Version of marketing
Objection
Textbook presentations of marketing are 
Most of the theory presented is drawn from
based on limited real-world data
US packaged consumer goods activity and 
cannot be generalized to the broader 
cultural domain of instrumentally oriented 
economy
Services are treated as a special case, 
Services account for the majority of GNP,
when goods are a minor part of total 
employment, and new companies. Well-
marketing attention
managed service operations are a condition
for goods to be sought and utilized. Many 
textbooks do not cover the actual 
composition of the economy satisfactorily 
Industrial and business marketing are 
Consumer marketing does not actually
treated as a special case – consumer 
dominate the economy, despite being
marketing dominates
portrayed as doing so. Much marketing and 
purchasing takes place between corporate 
bodies and is invisible to most people, while 
consumer marketing and purchasing is a 
personal experience. Most textbooks do not 
reflect this
The knowledge is a patchwork, with 
New developments in thinking and practice
little integration of new knowledge with 
are treated in separate chapters as add-on
established knowledge
detail, when synthesis is necessary. Many 
‘new’ ideas are obsolete by the time they 
reach the textbooks. Researchers devote too 
much attention to testing established 
theories
Pedagogical form overrides substance – 
Aesthetic values of presentation have, in
design is better than content
many cases, overtaken the attention 
necessary to content. What is discussed is 
incomplete and lacks integration, but is 
attractively packaged
European thinking is subverted by the 
US textbook authors and gurus have been
domination of US thinking
successfully colonizing our thinking for 
decades. Arguably, they are less critical in 
their thinking when they are successful in 
terms of book sales. European academics 
and practitioners default to mere bystanders,
and fail to recognize the particular market 
environment from which much of the 
textbook content emanates 
Source
: Gummesson, 1993

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is communicative when it comes into the awareness of a person operating as
a consumer.
The marketing concept is centred on the concept of exchange. We need
a communication theory basis for marketing communication that is also based
on exchange, and should also be able to account for the co-production of
identity, meaning, and knowledge (Deetz, 1992).
Compare:
1.