The Theory of the Marketing Firm

The marketing firm is that business organisation which responds to the imperatives of consumer-orientation. Its style of management is marked by its adherence to the criteria of goal separation, participation in marketing transactions, entrepreneurial sovereignty and reciprocal entrepreneurial management, all of which are explored in this pioneering book. It  assumes the proposition, uncontroversial enough to marketing academics and students, that contemporary firms can survive and prosper – achieve their financial goal, be it the maximization of profit or sales or growth – only if they respond appropriately to those imperatives: specifically, the forces that promote  consumer discretion and consumer sophistication. Surprisingly, however, theories of the firm, based on economics, strategic management or behavioural science, show scant recognition of this observation which is abundantly clear from the most elementary treatment of marketing management. Renowned scholar Gordon R. Foxall argues that this proposition should form the starting point of a theory of the firm and explores its implications for marketing theory in the light of the findings of consumer behaviour analysis and research on the marketing firm. Hence, while pursuing a competence theory of the marketing firm based on the idealised implications of the imperatives of consumer-orientation, the book rests its conception on a groundwork of empirical evidence on consumer behaviour and corporate action.


Gordon R. Foxall is Distinguished Research Professor at Cardiff Business School (UK) and Visiting Research Professor of Economic Psychology at Reykjavik University (Iceland). He holds a PhD in industrial economics and business studies from the University of Birmingham, a PhD in psychology from Strathclyde University and a higher doctorate (DSocSc) also from Birmingham. He is the author of Understanding Consumer Choice (2005) and Perspectives on Consumer Choice (2016), both published by Palgrave Macmillan.