A general theory of marketing: Conceivable, elusive, or illusive

Hunt et al. (2022, in this issue) provide a perspective on the evolution of the marketing discipline spanning five eras, its current state, and outlook. Looking back, they view certain developments in the evolutionary trajectory of the discipline during Era 4 as troubling. Looking ahead at Era 5, they propose certain course correction initiatives for consideration by the marketing academia. They delineate the service-dominant logic, general framework of integrative marketing, and resource-advantage theory of competition as candidates that merit consideration for the mainstream focus of the discipline during Era 5 and propose a set of questions for evaluation. In reference to the evolutionary trajectory of the field during Era 4, they characterize the fragmentation of the field and subsequent loss of community as a troubling development. As argued in this commentary, fragmentation is an inevitable consequence of specialization and a normal phenomenon in the evolutionary trajectory of academic disciplines. Upheavals due to fragmentation, if any, are likely to be transient. Of the three candidates highlighted by the authors as meriting consideration for the discipline’s mainstream focus during Era 5, this commentary primarily focuses on Hunt’s resource-advantage theory as a foundation for developing a general theory of marketing from the perspective of Hunt’s fundamental explananda of marketing.