MARKETING CULTURES AND PRE‐CULTURES

With the talk in recent years of “corporate culture,” it may be useful to reflect on marketing styles from this point of view. There are, after all, enormous variations in how different organizations approach marketing, and I like to think of these as reflecting differing “marketing cultures.” Two distinct types of marketing culture seem to predominate among packaged goods companies: “analytically driven” and “advertising‐driven.” Some organizations have yet to develop a true marketing culture, and they would fall into a third category that might be called “marketing pre‐culture.” This category would include companies that use some of the marketing tools but fail to meet certain criteria of a marketing culture, such as making marketing part of the planning process.