MARKETING PARADOXES: EXPLICATION OF SOME BASIC MARKETING PARADOXES

Abstract

This paper aims to clarify the relationship between marketing and important economic/business categories and the internal relationship between two fundamental marketing principles. The author used a qualitative approach to determine the existence of mentioned paradoxes, i.e., using logic-verbal methods is usual in economic theory/philosophy where rational discussion is the essence of understanding economic phenomena and delivering significant insights. The results showed three existing contemporary marketing paradoxes. The first is the paradox of marketing and sales/entrepreneurship, i.e., a paradox between satisfying the wishes and needs of the customers and the salesman/entrepreneur. The second is the paradox of marketing and rational consumer/homo economicus because of their conflicting goals. The third is the intramarketing paradox, i.e., between old and new basic marketing principles, because of substantial incompatibility and dubious effect on consumer well-being. A limitation of this paper is the lack of a mainstream marketing approach that does not emphasize significant concepts contradictions and the absence of quantitative methodology for testing the theses/conclusions. The theoretically unsolvable marketing paradoxes solving can be facilitated by finding a dialectical compromise between achieving contradictory goals closest to the optimal win-win principle. Solutions where only one of the parties in the relationship should dominantly benefit (win-lose) are of no use.