Higher Than the Bottom Line: Reflections on Some Recent Macromarketing Literature

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Abstract
This essay reviews some recent (macro)marketing literature on the subject of where we are and where we are going in our discipline as we approach the year 2000. It addresses some perplexing questions concerning the fate of contemporary consumers at the hands of the businesses that claim to serve them and raises some worrisome issues regarding the potential death of marketing. Somewhere between the extremes of McDonaldization and mass customization, the review locates a small but fertile postmodern terrain in need of cultivation. Herein, it seeks answers among those who train their eyes not so much on the prize as on the stars—in other words, among those who look higher than the bottom line.