Walter van Waterschoot

Marketing Mix Metaphorosis: the Heavy Toll of too much Popularity

The marketing mix concept is quintessential to marketing. It follows directly from and expresses the very nature of marketing. It is inherent to anymarketing situation – even if this ismore obvious in somesituations than in others. Logically therefore its origin and traces are intertwined with those of the marketing discipline. The antecedents of marketing go way back into the history of many economies, even if these show different time patterns (Fullerton, 1988). Taken together a study of marketing history reveals that marketing theory and managerial practice resulted from fundamentally and substantially changing market circumstances in the Western world, mainly around the end of the nineteenth and during the first half of the twentieth century. An increasing divide between production and consumption implied the structural presence of supply as well as of demand in diverse product and service areas. Over the course of history, both supply and demand potential tended to become increasingly substantial as well as heterogeneous and consequently also more or less non-transparent. Importantly also, even if potential demand typically increased (for example, because of rising incomes) potential supply was or became typically even larger in relative terms (for example, because of innovations). The emergence of these buyers’ markets forced marketers to engage in all sorts of marketing efforts to attract the attention