Philosophy of
Marketing Thought
An extensive study of archival materials is used to examine the philosophic origins of marketing thought at two centers of early development, the University of Wisconsin and the Harvard Business School. Evidence suggests that the German Historical school of economics provided much of the philosophic foundation of the discipline.
N this article, we attempt to examine some of the currents from which twentieth century marketing thought emerged in order to provide a correct account of its philosophic origins. Marketing historians have identified the first associations, books, and articles pertaining to marketing as we know it today (Bartels 1962). However, these elements reflect marketing once it had been labeled as such. We do not take issue with the accepted wisdom about who the first marketing scholars were, what constitutes the earliest marketing literature, or which university courses were the first in the field of marketing. Nor do we attempt to redefine marketing as it was conceived initially. These facts about the early history of marketing ideas were certainly considered. However, ideas do not develop in a vacuum. We therefore look beyond this patchwork of surface facts and identify some common