Two crises in marketing - a short notice on the history of marketing thought

Abstract

In this article two critical periods of marketing thought is analysed. Identity crisis in marketing in the 1970s was caused by a Kotlerian initiative on broadening the concept of marketing to non-profit organisations, as well. Crisis has come to a positive end by acceptance of the new ideas. Two decades later a postmodernist idea of marketing apocalypse emerged as an approach to crisis based on eschatology caused by a general dissatisfaction with practical and theoretical achievement of marketing. This apocalyptic vision of the end of marketing proved too extremist to be taken seriously, however, apocalypse conditional by Fisk (1997) contains several very serious and influencing ideas on future opportunities of marketing.