structural:summarization
Brief description of the dominant schools of thought

By the 1920s, the marketing discipline was organised into three schools of thought: the commodity school, the institutional school and the functional school. The following sections briefly outlines the schools of thought as conceptualised by key thinkers in the discipline. Although these can be treated as separate schools of thought, considerable overlap between them is evident. The three schools that preceded marketing management exhibited a highly descriptive approach and collectively these are often called the classical schools. These schools borrowed heavily from economics and were largely concerned with aggregate demand and lacked a focus on the individual firm. By the 1960s, all previous schools of thought had been eclipsed by the managerial school because it offered a problem-solving approach and presented marketers with potential solutions to marketing problems that were frequently encountered.