D.Comm. / The marketing concept has been widely accepted as the most important component of marketing academia and practice since the 1950s. Over the decades the marketing concept has grown in stature - from being described as the old marketing concept to the new marketing concept. This was an evolutionary process that catapulted the marketing concept to a philosophy of conducting business that is considered the central tenet of a successful organization. The customer became the dead-end of all corporate efforts. However, the elevation of the marketing concept to the position of such unprecedented importance, and the articulation of market orientation as the implementation construct of the marketing concept represented the genesis of modern marketing and paved the way for generations of practitioners, consultants, and academic researchers. Most academic researchers cast doubt on the veracity of the concept among other issues and the marketing concept’s application and applicable areas became sticking points of argument. Despite much research undertaken, albeit mostly in the Western world, the marketing concept’s acceptance in the ICT sector in South Africa is a case in point. The purpose of the study was to test the adoption and implementation of the marketing concept in the ICT sector in South Africa, as envisaged in literature. The major elements of the study were to find the extent of the chosen respondents’ agreements in terms of the 39 questions in a questionnaire that represented the six pillars of the 21st century marketing concept, as defined in this study. Thereafter, the other sections of the questionnaire detailed the practical adoption and implementation of the marketing concept. The last section required of respondents to rank the six pillars of the marketing concept in terms of importance, the purpose being to lay a foundation for developing a framework that would be used for adoption and implementation of the marketing concept in the ICT sector. The major findings indicated that the ICT sector has accepted the marketing concept to an extent and that there are no differences in acceptance between the major subgroups, i.e. (i) services and manufacturing organizations and (ii) subsidiaries of international organizations and local South African organizations. The results show startling revelations about the ICT sector’s management philosophy. A framework for the adoption and implementation of the marketing concept in the ICT sector in South Africa was developed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uj/uj:6705 |
| Date | 25 March 2010 |
| Creators | Mazengera, Stewart |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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