Beauty and the Beast of Philosophy in Marketing

Abstract

Management by nature is inter-disciplinary in character. It borrows heavily from sociology, psychology, mathematics and statistics, etc and converts the insights gained from these subjects into application-oriented theories that act as guiding principles for managers, leaders, and organizations. They also serve the purpose of further research into this discipline. The interdisciplinary space between management and philosophy is relatively unexplored and is generally passed on as a facile statement of management itself is a philosophy. This paper explores the relevance and possible applications of various philosophical constructs from the field of aesthetics into marketing. The reasons for a consumer to buy and consume a product or service are multifarious but as the market forces flatten the distinguishing factors like technology, processes, etc, one product more and more looks like all other products in the same category. In such a scenario, product aesthetics or the look and feel of the product becomes the primary if not the only distinguishing factor between products. Aesthetics has had a long history from Aristotle’s mimesis to the paradoxes of Immanuel Kant to the antithesis of the beauty of Goethe. This paper explores all of them and explores their possible relevance in the field of marketing of products and services.