I call on each of you to continue the relationship that we have begun today. The field of marketing in the United States has struggled to identify and maintain those areas which are understood to be separate, unique, and unrelated to all other fields. This interpretation of what represents a functional business activity has been driven by the American philosophy of pluralism. Those who follow a pluralistic approach to life embrace the philosophy that knowledge, skills, and attitudes are separate entities, each of which function in a linear fashion. My work demonstrates that, instead of blindly accepting that marketing must be driven by separation, we must search for market power by combining marketing with all other resources.
Market power is the capacity to block competition from access to targeted markets.
A unitary approach to life embraces the philosophy that knowledge, skills, and attitudes are linked and connected, and that they function in a circular fashion. In the 1960s, the systems movement in business was a feeble attempt to combine marketing into the broader business system. The systems movement failed because its leadership did not understand that the concept of a system is embedded in the underlying philosophy of combining. Because the issue of systems was not viewed as a philosophical one, the movement deteriorated into the view that marketing was its own system. Consequently, the idea that the world, the nation, business, and marketing are part of a unified whole was lost.