Contemporary marketing: A niche for Indian market

Marketing is a large, complex and scattered research area with many sub disciplines – not easy for a fresh entrepreneur to navigate. The purpose of this paper is shed light on marketing theory and what the contemporary issues are. The paper offers both an overview of marketing theory, an understanding what is publishable in marketing today as well as a critical perspective on marketing. Marketing academics and practitioners have long grappled with the concept of what marketing is and more critically how is it practiced. What can we, as academics, consider as contemporary marketing practice when marketing practitioners have such a large and developing toolbox of techniques and strategies available to them? Do we have a general understanding of what constitutes marketing practice as it prevails within business today? These and other questions have occupied marketers minds for many years with a dearth of empirical studies to support the myriad of views that pertain not only within academic circles but also within general business understanding of marketing. We consider real-life (mainly European) companies that have implemented these different marketing approaches. Finally, we deal with the pedagogical contributions including an examination of how it is possible for business schools to teach the subject of marketing from a relationship marketing perspective in such a way that the relevance and quality of teaching and research in relationship marketing is useful to students, faculty, and the business community.