ABSTRACT
This chapter returns to the establishment of a Sophistic understanding of marketing, and works towards presenting an improved version of the definition of marketing originally presented in Chapter 4. The chapter revisits and deepens major themes from the previous chapters in order to arrive at a more rounded conception of marketing as rhetoric. It considers the value of relativism, improvisation (kairos), magical thinking, and an agonistic perspective in understanding what makes marketing powerful, desirable, and unique. It also argues that, without recognition of the centrality of control to what marketing does, a full understanding of marketing’s place in society will be always out of reach. It concludes by advancing a definition of marketing which understands it as providing intermediary services to facilitate the continuing exchange of attention and regard between firm/client and stakeholders. Marketing seeks to manage and direct this exchange through an appreciation of the changing rational and irrational motivations of the firm and stakeholders, using these as resources for the construction of both planned and improvised persuasive interactions in agonistic environments.
