Marketing, a management technology, a societal provisioning system, the study of seller and buyer decision processes in increasingly complex contexts or a discipline within the social sciences?

OUTLINE
Is marketing a management technology, a societal provisioning system, or the study of seller and buyer decision processes in increasingly complex contexts, or could it be repositioned as a discipline within the social sciences?  Could repositioning avert the growing fragmentation of marketing scholarship?  Would it open up new opportunities for significant research in and between these different ways of seeing our discipline?  And would perhaps the right repositioning engage marketing with adjacent social sciences in explorations opening up new fields of research, influencing management choice and public policy in the challenges human communities face at all levels?    One possible positioning that offers a positive response to these questions is to assert “Marketing is the study of value co-creation through voluntary economic choice made in exchange among individuals and entities in and between human communities”.  This positioning includes studies in manager and customer choice, work in societal provisioning systems in communities at any and all levels of development, and the growing interests in culture and communication.  Links with anthropology, archaeology, history, sociology and economics are then explored.  Drawing on empirical work in marketing and in adjacent disciplines the core elements of a dynamic theory of evolutionary change in exchange networks and marketing systems are identified, providing a possible starting point for an exploration of the marketing response to the difficult and complex challenges faced by many human communities.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY
In 1967 Roger Layton was appointed Professor of Marketing, filling a newly established chair that had been funded by a group of leading Sydney business people. The School of Marketing was formed in 1969 and he became Head of School at that time, remaining in that position until his appointment in 1992 as Dean of the Faculty of Commerce and Economics.  In this role he contributed to the development of higher education in China and in 2000 was made an Honorary Citizen of Guangzhou.  In 2002, Professor Layton became Executive Dean of the Faculty of Law Business and Creative Arts at the James Cook University in Townsville. In 2003 he was appointed Vice President, International Program Development.   He returned to UNSW in 2004 and currently he is Emeritus Professor and continues as Professor of Marketing. He was elected Fellow of ANZMAC in 2010, and is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management, the Australian Marketing Institute, the Australian Market and Social Research Society and Honorary Fellow of UNSW.

He is the joint author of several books including Fundamentals of Marketing and Contemporary Hospitality Marketing – A Service Management Approach.    His current research interests centre on macromarketing, including strategic management in and of complex multi-level marketing systems.  His research in macromarketing has been recognised through the award of the Charles Slater Memorial Award in 1990, 2008 and 2011, the George Fisk best paper awards in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2011, the Shelby Hunt Award in 2011, and the Robert Nason Award for extraordinary and sustained contribution in 2013.  In 1996, his contributions to marketing were recognised through the inaugural award of Distinguished Marketing Educator from the Australian and New Zealand Marketing Educator’s Conference. In 1998 he was made a member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his services to Marketing.