The Marketing Sciences

Science: 1a. The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation and theoretical explanation of phenomena. b. Such activities applied to an object of inquiry or study. 2. Methodological activity, discipline or study. 3. Knowledge, especially that gained through experience.

Traditionally, marketing was thought to be part business science and part art — the right and left sides of our brains mixing it up, with the creative side emerging victorious. But every other function in business — accounting, manufacturing, IT, engineering, legal (to name but a few) — is recognized as a science and is accountable in a measurable way. For too long in the marketing world, metaphorically speaking, the chicken came before the egg, the cart before the horse. For too long, the advertising arts ruled and marketing companies were exempt from the scientific process.

New Millennium technology ushered in a more scientific platform from which to evaluate the role of marketing. Today technology has become accountable through measurement, reporting and return on market investment; it has morphed from creative mysticism to realism, quantification and bottom line awareness. In other words, a methodological discipline. A science.