DEFINING THE POSITION AND SCIENTIFIC AIMS OF MARKETING IN ECONOMIC-THEORY AND PRACTICE

Nowadays, as in the Fast, relatively few research papers have been ded icated to the area of the scientific status of marketing as a function al economic discipline. As ear ly as two hundred years ago the philoso pher Ludovici meditated on the prestige of economic and social science s and concluded that the prestige of economic and social sciences is l ower than that of natural sciences. Ludovici claimed that it is debasi ng for serious scientists to be concerned with economics. The argument on whether marketing is a science at all was opened fully in the sixt ies of this century. Opponents or sceptics point out at the difficulti es with definitions and measurement of virtually important factors con cerning mainly human behaviour. They stress also the singularity of pr oblem situations! which rules out almost totally any generalization. A s an extreme, they consider marketing as a craft or an art, depending to a great extent on the marketer's personality. Marketing in Europe i s regarded as a special function and section of the theory of enterpri se economics whereas in Anglo-Saxon countries it is considered to be e conomic discipline sui generis. The potential object of research inclu des social life as a whole with all types of enterprises, and human be ing in the centre - that means that the theory of enterprise economics and marketing appear to be (just as applied sociology and psychology) in a certain sense a relation against other disciplines. The problem of whether division into individual disciplines, or admissibility of i nterdisciplinary subjects (such as marketing) are meaningful has been often discussed since the 1960s. The complexity of the subject marketi ng brings about the necessity of ''borrowing'' from other sciences, an d this cannot be avoided. That is the reason why a great part of the m ethods of research in marketing consists currently of methods used in sociology. Every science deals with the concentrate independent of com mon language - e.g. it deals with terms and statements. Considering th e criteria imposed on the use of scientific terms, mainly exactness (e .g. whether the events and facts can be unequivocally assigned to a ce rtain term), consistency (if a certain term can be used singularly) an d validity (whether the term indeed expresses what was meant by it), o ne can even today state (at least in part) some weak spots of marketin g. Particularly at the beginning the term marketing, moreover taken fr om a foreign language a fashionable word, which appeared to many criti cs as being hollow, and even to many interested it sounded rather unce rtain. The interpretation of marketing as a ''concept of management'' did not ease the seeking of indicators that could help to understand m arketing. The neglect of terminology was the symptom of a mainly empir ical and inductive approach. A special problem in marketing in particu lar - and in economy sciences in general is presented by examination o f hypotheses. Marketing processes and phenomena are an extraordinary c omplex, influenced by many factors and determined by human behaviour, e.g. changing and unstable. Plurality of aims and behaviour patterns o ften enable to formulate only stochastic statements. At the beginning of the sixties, the conviction prevailed that one can fully understand the laws of die market and consecutively thus a perfect marketing the ory can be created as a closed and generally valid system, useful not only for science but applicable above all in decision making practices in enterprises. As time went by, this enthusiasm gradually disappeare d. Marketing is a real applied science, it is the ''theory of politics '', which pronounces neither generally valid valuations nor definitive conclusions. Marketing as a science oriented at practice aims - aside fi om its illustration task - to provide within the framework of crea tive task also recommendations for action/behaviour, and thus undoubte dly mediate certain evaluating statements. From the point of view of t he whole society, the marketing discipline has led to the improvement of competition, to greater market transparency and to faster adaptatio n. Better reviews of producers and consumers influence improved satiat ion of hardly measurable needs. The decrease of prices, stimulation of competition technical progress, luxury goods now available to lower c lasses too, are further important impacts ascribable to marketing. Fro m the point of view of the enterprise economy, marketing provides the following positive effects: growing market transparency decreases the risk of wrong decisions and widens opportunities for action; effective flexibility means that the enterprise adapts itself to the chosen mar ket (promising from the long-term point of view) and reacts in time to challenges in the market; bids ''tailor-made'' to meet selected objec t groups make the enterprise particularly attractive, in the ideal cas e unique and bring about permanently satisfied customers; sensitivity and candidates improve relations between enterprise and public rationa l, strategic and coordinated steps aimed at the market ensure reaching profit goals and long-term enterprise life. Discussions on the questi on of what is the position of marketing within the economics of the en terprise must be conducted in line with the basic decision, whether to consider enterprise economics as pure basic science or as applied tec hnology. Supporters of the second approach often argue with the undisp uted link between science and technology. Here we have an often uniden tified problem of which particular basic scientific information relate s to the application route. It seems that the science theory alone is unsuitable for deciding from a certain metatheory position the dispute between the theoretic route and applied orientation of marketing. We analyze in the paper certain tendencies that exist towards the institu tional classification of marketing into theoretical, and manager orien ted lines, at the same time both these lines reject this classificatio n for tactical reasons. While analyzing the relation between applied s cience and scientific theory of marketing, doubts were cast on the pro blem of whether scientific theory has the task to provide normative st atements at all. From the special applied science point of view, one c annot demand that the scientific theory of marketing should provide no rmative criteria and recommendations. Marketing researchers can provid e only model solutions of certain ideal situations.