Marketing Science: The Beginnings

The initial stage of what today we call “marketing science” can be dated back to the 1950s, having first come to light in the U.S. It was founded by a group of individuals belonging to a university who were seeking to distinguish their research and publications from those of practitioners. The breaking point was the foundation of the Marketing Science Institute, the objective of which was to bridge the gap between academic studies on the one hand and the practical aspects of marketing on the other. Marketing science started to be considered as modelling marketing actions based on the disciplines of economics, statistics, operations research, and other related fields. Was there any impact on carmakers’ marketing strategies? There is no clear evidence of a direct, fast impact on marketing strategies, especially in the car industry. However, the inception of Marketing Science indisputably paved the way for a conceptual marketing framework which, in that period, drove what is called the “marketing revolution”. The major carmakers successfully assimilated many of the advances driven by marketing science. Such benefits included better-defined market targeting thanks to progress in motivational research and a deeper understanding of consumers’ behaviour when faced with different pricing options, through a conjoint analysis. The main results were achieved through decisions based on econometric models or market experiments to measure advertising efficiency. These models could be classified into three streams of research: (1) models of advertising elasticity; (2) models of advertising carryover and dynamics; and (3) models of advertising frequency.