Inside Marketing Practices, Ideologies, Devices

The intensification of marketing activities in recent years has led the public to become much more aware of its role as consumers. Yet, the increased visibility of marketing materials and associated messages in everyday life is in contrast with the often little understood inner workings of the marketing profession itself, despite the widespread recognition of marketers as key agents in shaping the face of global capitalism. Inside Marketing offers a theoretically informed critical perspective on contemporary marketing practice and its growing cultural, economic, and political influence worldwide. This book brings together leading scholars and practitioners from the fields of business, history, economic sociology, and cultural anthropology, to analyse the inner workings and outer effects of marketing as a material social practice, an ideology, and a technique. Their work raises some important and timely questions. How has marketing transformed the pharmaceutical industry and what are the consequences for our lives? How does marketing influence the way we think of progress and modernity? How has marketing changed the way we think of childhood? And how does marketing appropriate the creativity of consumers for profit? This book offers scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners a theoretical and conceptual understanding of how marketing works as a cultural institution and as an ideology.