California Management Review

Abstract

Marketing tends to view technology as a means to meeting customer needs and desires. This view has led some marketers to focus perhaps too exclusively on the customer to the detriment of a deep understanding of technology and its interaction with society. Drawing on the ideas of the philosophers Heidegger and Popper, this article contends that technology is more than a means to the end of satisfying consumer needs and wants, it is an active force which frequently escapes the control of the marketer. The article explores the ways in which technologies, firms, customers, and society interact, and it suggests how firms might adopt different strategies towards technology to take advantage of these emergent interactions.

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