The Role Played by the Broadening of Marketing Movement in the History of Marketing Thought

made a fine contribution to the understanding of the history of marketing thought in their article “Scholarly Research in Marketing: Exploring the ‘4 Eras ’ of Thought Development. ” However, because the authors were required to limit their description of the whole history of marketing thought to 30 pages, some thought streams received relatively brief treatment and therefore deserve further elaboration. One such thought stream is the “broadening of marketing ” movement, which received only one short paragraph in the article. I believe that broadening deserves more attention, and I offer this article as an expanded note on the role and impact of the broadening of marketing movement. The broadening movement was an effort to free the marketing paradigm from the narrow confines of commercial marketing and to show its application to a far larger number of contexts in which exchange and relationship activities take place. Until 1970, marketing language and theory focused on explaining how goods and services are priced, promoted, and distributed in commercial markets by forprofit firms. Transactions and payment were considered central to the definition of markets and marketing. Other domains of exchange activity, such as the efforts of museums, performing-arts groups, churches, social agencies, city governments, social action groups, and celebrities to attract and serve visitors, members, donors, clients, fans, and others, were outside the purview of marketing and its concepts. The problems that such groups faced were examined, if at all, by public relations practitioners and press agents. In the late 1960s, some scholars began to believe that these noncommercial organizations faced “marketing-like” problems that could be fruitfully addressed with marketing