Marketing in the Republic (part 1)

Bell (1966) discusses marketing’s debt to systems theory, in particular to cybernetics, ‘the

science of control and communication in the animal and in the machine’, first developed by Norbert Wiener. This focuses attention on marketing as part of a social system. Generally, the approach used in this book I am analyzing entitled Fundamentals of Marketing is managerialist, focused on the perspective of the firm rather than that of the customer. Both firms and customers are considered in relation to the environment in which they seek to survive. The view is that firms can best survive when they seek to ensure the survival and satisfaction of the customers on whom they depend.