From Marketing Ideology to Branding Ideology

This special issue of the Journal of Macromarketing is concerned with the globalization of marketing ideology. That topic raises the questions of what constitutes a marketing ideology and what might be its status on the global scene. The different approaches adopted in this special issue acknowledge the breadth of the topic and illuminate the intersection of marketing with the basic forces of cultures, politics, religion, conflicts, and a dismal financial debt crisis in the Western nations. To gain perspective, it seems relevant to observe the historical trajectory of marketing ideology and its likely continued path. To this end, we trace marketing ideology from a nineteenth-century premarketing ideology, to its initial focus on production/distribution technology, to its early twentieth-century focus on customer orientation and branding, to its current focus on network conversations and the significance of modern brand ubiquity. Using these insights, we then discuss three perspectives on future development and raise some potentially relevant questions.