How Modern is Modern Marketing? Marketing's Evolution and the Myth of the “Production Era”

Abstract

The widely accepted belief in a Production Era implies that serious and sophisticated marketing is a recent phenomenon. Analyzing conditions in Britain, Germany, and the United States, the author shows that the Production Era concept obscures the extent and level of development of earlier marketing practice, as do the Sales Era and Marketing Era concepts. A new model of marketing's evolution is used to propose a more accurate periodization of modern marketing's development.