Marketing as constructive engagement

The purpose of this essay is to provoke a more comprehensive, historically accurate, and meaningful definition of marketing. Toward that outcome, the author introduces a framework for marketing that argues for constructive engagement with a complex, conflicted, and increasingly interdependent world in which marketing can and should play an important role. The framework offers a new synthesis commensurate with ideals generally espoused in macromarketing. An illustration based on longitudinal study of Vietnam is shared, with implications for current global affairs and with new directions for meaningful marketing research and practice.