Marketing‐orientation Revisited: The Crucial Role of the Part‐time Marketer

Abstract

Most of a company′s marketing is not carried out by the professional full‐time marketer but by the amateur part‐time marketer (PTM), who is omnipotent both inside and outside a company. The PTM influences customer relations and revenue without belonging to the marketing or sales department. Unless the PTM is recognised, marketing can never be efficient. Although this is in essence a matter of marketing‐orientation, which of course is not new, it has been found to be a much more profound and difficult issue to implant in organisations than is suggested by marketing textbooks. The purpose here is to identify current approaches to marketing‐orientation and organise them around one central concept, the PTM. In order to do so theory from three areas will be used: services marketing, the network/interaction theory of industrial marketing, and total quality management.