Marketing as an intervening variable

Marketing managers are always concerned with the changing relationships between a business and its external environment. Marketing must have its primary focus in company adjustments to meet the wants, needs, and opportunities of the market place in a better manner. Marketing, therefore, is an intervening variable between two environments.

The first is an enabling environment, or a larger system, within which a business operates and which is affected by sociological, psychological, technological and economic forces. The second is a precipitating environment, an internal system, which helps precipitate innovation, the creation of differential advantage, and the implementation of aggressive competition on the part of the individual firm. It is the latter environment which stimulates corporations to program innovation.

Marketing as an intervening variable links the enabling environment with the precipitating environment. It becomes a means of fulfillment for a business enterprise. In this role marketing becomes directly concerned with change and innovation. Most immediately, innovation is perceived as a means of providing for the growth and survival of business. In reality, however, it is more than a tool for corporate prosperity. Innovation is among the significant stimuli of social change. As a result it creates problems -- problems that stem from social change. It has an impact on value systems, on cultures, and on economic and social orders.