A Twenty‐first Century Guide to Aldersonian Marketing Thought

Citation

Beckman, T. and Dale Beckman, M. (2008), "A Twenty‐first Century Guide to Aldersonian Marketing Thought", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 42 No. 1/2, pp. 257-260. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090560810841014

A Twenty‐first Century Guide to Aldersonian Marketing Thought – reworking the old gold mine

Throughout the last century marketing scholars have looked at their discipline from various perspectives. Early writers focused on its distribution aspects. Others developed knowledge with respect to selling and advertising, and the focus gradually shifted to the consumer and the managerial aspects of marketing.

In the 1950s one man stands out for his efforts to pull together all of the extant approaches and to try to develop a cohesive theory of marketing. In doing so Wroe Alderson went beyond assimilation of existing writings and wrote numerous articles and books in which he tried to explain the behaviour of customers, firms and the way they interacted in the market place.

Alderson was an intellectual giant and was tremendously influential during his lifetime. He put forth powerful and cogent concepts and propositions. Many still have currency, and few have been refuted. Yet, amazingly, many marketers – in particular new marketers – have never heard of him, or cannot recall any of these concepts and propositions. Is there still gold in his writings?

Ben Wooliscroft, Robert D. Tamilia and Stanley J. Shapiro (WTS) think so. They have compiled an interesting book which brings Wroe Alderson back to life. The book has three major themes: glimpses into the kind of interesting character he was, key excerpts from his writings, and commentaries on the perceived current relevance of Aldersonian marketing thought. Their stated purpose in writing this book is “to familiarize a new generation of marketing scholars with the life, the writings and the intellectual legacy of Wroe Alderson” (p. xvii). Their other unstated, but apparent, objective is for this book to be a catalyst in the development of marketing theory today, through extant Aldersonian thought and writings. Certainly WTS have provided an invaluable resource that with its mix of Alderson's writings and commentaries on Alderson has the potential to meet their stated purpose. However these authors feel that WTS may have come up slightly short on this book alone being a catalyst for further work in the vein of Alderson – but only time will tell in that regard.

The section by Wooliscroft that details Alderson's personal life provides a glimpse into the motivations and perspectives that drove Alderson and strongly influenced his writing. Wroe Alderson never earned a PhD but turned down several honorary doctorate offers – he hadn't really “earned” a doctorate. He was a successful businessman and consultant who also spent several years as an academic at Wharton, where he made major contributions including founding the Marketing Science Institute. He was a Quaker, a philosopher, a gourmand, and raconteur. He read widely in different fields and integrated ideas from diverse areas into his approach to marketing theory. Graduate students loved to work for him despite some of his slightly eccentric and absent‐minded lapses.

Alderson's writing was prodigious, and the 19‐page list of his articles and books found in this book is a valuable resource in and of itself. Additionally, the book provides quite extensive highlights of Alderson's writing in sets of articles grouped under two categories: Alderson's Theory of Market Behavior, and Writings on Management Practice and Ethical Behavior.

Notable Aldersonian articles in these sections are “Competition for differential advantage, matching and sorting: the logic of exchange and cooperation and conflict in marketing channels”, and a “Basic guide to marketing planning”. Whether current marketers realize it or not, ideas from these articles permeate twenty‐first century marketing thinking. From this set of articles, any reader will gain a solid understanding of the primary marketing theories and concepts propounded by Alderson.

The amount of material presented here is too rich and extensive to summarize. However, an excerpt from Holbrook's (2001, p. 37) reference to Marketing Behavior and Executive Action (1957), Alderson's best‐known book, provides a glimpse of what the reader will find:

So why do I recommend Wroe Alderson as the seminal source of a world‐changing moment? It strikes me, in retrospect, that Alderson was far ahead of his time in the formulation of marketing theory generally and especially in expounding 1) the ecological view and 2) the experiential perspective. First, with respect to 1) the ecological view, Alderson was the earliest writer in my recollection to call attention to the importance of fitting into the environment and pursuing a niche that confers a selective advantage. In this, he anticipated ideas that later came to full flower under the headings of environmentalism, the ecological imperative, the systems view, and (more generally) macromarketing. … Second, regarding 2) the experiential perspective, Alderson was the first in our discipline to stress the importance of … the “consumption experience”.

Some have contended that Alderson's writing was sometimes difficult to understand. (e.g. Holbrook, 2001; Hunt et al., 1981). Thus the inclusion of commentaries on Aldersonian thought is a useful addition to this book. Some of these commentaries were previously published and some were written specifically for inclusion in this book.

The previously published commentaries provide refinements and explanations of Alderson's theories (Chapter 26, Hunt et al., 1981) and approaches (Chapter 27, Reekie and Savitt, 1982). They also show how Alderson's conceptual work has crossed disciplinary boundaries (Chapter 27, Reekie and Savitt, 1982), and how it has been compared with other's work like that of Michael Porter (Chapter 29, Priem, Rasheed, and Amirani, 1997).

The new commentaries provide a further glimpse of Alderson, the man: (Chapter 31, “The Wroe Alderson I Knew”, Halbert; Chapter 32, “Wroe Alderson as Academic Entrepreneur: The Wharton Years”, Shapiro). A broad‐based integration of some of Alderson's concepts into Hunt's resource advantage theory (Chapter 33, Hunt and Arnett) is provided, and a suggestion of how Alderson's structural/functional approach could be modified to include a dynamic component, thus making it more relevant to marketing researchers today (Chapter 35, Walle).

Most of the commentators focus clearly on the positive side of Alderson's work, with very little criticism, or mention of shortcomings. However, the chapter by Tamilia (Chapter 34) is refreshing in that he points out both the positive and the negatives of Aldersonian thought; how it could or could not fit into the marketing world of today. For example, “[Alderson] presented his theory of marketing as a system with no apparent links to society's other institutions. He did not explore the relation of marketing to other subsystems in society, such as the school, the church, the culture, and the government” (p. 491). Perhaps Alderson would have addressed such issues had he lived longer; however, any extensions to Aldersonian thought will have to deal with the points raised by Tamilia in this chapter.

WTS have provided an excellent resource that showcases Aldersonian thought. However, it would have been helpful to provide some specific examples of how Aldersonian ideas could contribute to, or lead to new research from this point onward. A comparison and contrast of some of Alderson's work with some of the current marketing theories, frameworks, approaches and concepts could lead to a set of propositions that could be empirically analyzed. For example, how do market orientation, the services dominant logic, the new definition of marketing, or consumer culture theory fit with Alderson's analytical framework for marketing? Or with the notion of a transvection? Or with the broad notions of sorting and matching? With the addition of another section or two, the book may have had more potential to be a catalyst for propelling Aldersonian thought to the forefront of marketing theory development.

If Alderson's ideas have traction today, and have the potential to directly contribute to the development of marketing theory, then they need to be shown to support and extend current marketing concepts, or to refute them. While a reader may infer such things from a thorough reading of this book, without a specific exposition of some examples, there is a danger that the Aldersonian thought will once again recede into the background of the thought and research of marketing academicians. Propositions for future development would have gone a long way to ensuring that this book would be a catalyst for further work in Aldersonian marketing.

One other section that would have been useful, although not absolutely required, would have been a discussion – likely by the editors themselves – of why Alderson has basically vanished from the landscape of marketing theory and research. If Alderson's work was forgotten so soon after his death, will it not again be forgotten for the same reasons? Or may it be forgotten even quicker as the number of people that actually worked with him diminishes over the years? Might WTS have offered a plan and a justification for bringing Alderson to prominence again, and for maintaining him in that position?

In conclusion, these reviewers feel that overall this book is an excellent vehicle for educating people on a guru, influencer, theoretician, practitioner and leader in the development of marketing theory. It also brings back into focus a number of powerful marketing concepts that have influenced the marketing field over the years. Although a bit more could have been done to explicitly suggest a course of future research based on the work of Alderson, the information is still contained within the writings in the book. And perhaps through the further efforts of WTS (and others), such as the recent special issue of the European Business Review on Alderson, this shortcoming will be overcome. Until then, this is a valuable resource for anyone desiring to know about marketing theory and to understand the genesis of a number of concepts currently found in today's marketing textbooks.