The marketing discipline has been dominated by managerial research that has never really been counterbalanced by a systematic critical analysis which is problematic given the assumed legitimization of the managerialism that has ensued. This book is an attempt to rest the balance, articulating a social critique and evaluation of marketing.

The book offers a critical survey of the most important contributions to managerial marketing discourse from the earliest twentieth century onwards, covering traditions of research such as scientific selling, marketing management and service marketing and drawing from Michel Foucault's understanding of power and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's Discourse Theory. The analysis reveals that managerial marketing discourse has promoted a government of organizations that is centred around the customer and that the shifts and turning points in this rationality through time signify more fundamental shifts in emphasis in the type of power promoted by marketing discourse and the subject positions is ascribes to people.