The Thesis behind the Centre’s Philosophy
“The Concept of Change: A Determinant for Explaining the Substance of Marketing”
This research provides organisations with:
A precise definition of marketing’s substance
Marketing is not a subset of business operations; it is the discipline concerned with understanding and shaping the forces of change that affect customer value, organisational relevance, and long-term performance.
A unifying conceptual model
Marketing is reframed from:
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Newtonian thinking → governed by fixed rules of exchange
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Darwinian thinking → focused on environmental adaptation
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Marketing as Change framework → where marketing is the custodian: of identifying, understanding, and implementing change within organisations; and of how value emerges, shifts, and stabilises over time.
A leadership message for organizations
Marketing cannot remain a peripheral department, a subset of business operations.
It must become a governing capability—one embedded at the centre of strategic decision-making.
A call to return to first principles
Organisations must rediscover the foundational truth:
Operating environments move. Markets move. Customers move. Competitors move. The organisation must move with purpose. The marketing discipline alone provides that purpose and importantly the leadership competency to survive in an ecosystem fundamentally characterised by change.