The metamorphosis of marketing into an information‐handling problem

TLDR

Marketing has traditionally been conceptualized along dimensions such as B2C/B2B and transaction versus relationship orientation, with scholars debating the most appropriate perspective. This paper argues that marketing should be viewed as an information‑handling problem. The authors identify core marketing tasks and analyze how each can be managed under transaction, relationship, and information‑driven frameworks. Three case study vignettes demonstrate the applicability of the information‑handling perspective to marketing practice.

Abstract

There have traditionally been different ways in which to view the marketing task, distinctions that have been drawn to facilitate the level of insight available to managers involved in marketing the firm's offer. A traditional distinction has been between business‐to‐consumer (B2C) and business‐to‐business (B2B) marketing. More recently, much has been written on whether the appropriate perspective of marketing should be transaction‐based or relationship‐driven. This paper argues that a different view is more useful: that the marketing task has moved beyond being transaction‐ or relationship‐driven, and that it can and should increasingly often be viewed as an information‐handling problem. First identifies what are considered to be the main tasks facing a marketing manager, and then interpret how these tasks may be managed in each of the transaction‐, relationship‐, and information‐driven approaches. By using three different case study vignettes, provides evidence of the applicability of these ideas.