Reading the Table

The periodic table reads in multiple directions. Down a column follows one research family through time, from its first appearance to its current frontier. Across a row shows what the field studied in one era, and which families were active at all. Each cell carries a number (assigned by era, then family), an influence tier shown as one to three filled squares, a block code, a two-letter symbol, the construct name, and its anchor works. The detached series beneath the grid holds the imported theories. The accompanying Family Deep Dives sub-tables share this same cell architecture, notation, and multi-directional reading to map each individual stream. While the Core Table carries predicted constructs in its 2020s open positions, the Family Deep Dives focus on the historical emergence and internal branching of each family. On the site, clicking any cell reveals its anchor works and notes, and the toolbar isolates rows, columns, tiers, and eras.

Reading across. The 18 families are grouped into seven meta-domains that run left to right in the logic of a strategy. Strategic Choice (columns 1 and 2) holds positioning, segmentation, and competitive timing, the choices a strategy makes. Resources and Orientation (3 to 6) holds what a firm brings to those choices: capabilities, market orientation, learning, and innovation. Organization and Programs (7 and 8) holds implementation, from marketing's role in the firm to the mix decisions that execute marketing strategy. Customer and Brand Assets (9 to 12) holds what strategy creates with customers: satisfaction, value and experience, relationships and customer equity, and brand and market-based assets. Interfirm Networks (13 and 14) extends the view beyond the firm to channels, governance, and supply chains. Context (15 to 17) holds the global, technological, and societal environments in which all of this occurs. Outcomes (18) closes the row with performance and the marketing-finance interface.

Reading down. The seven eras run from foundational work through 1969 to the 2020s. The first three rows are sparse by design: 12, 10, and 15 of 18 positions are filled because several families had no marketing literature before the 1980s. The middle three rows are full. Every family is occupied in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, the period in which marketing strategy consolidated as a field with its own specialized journals, reviews, and doctoral curricula, and all but two of those 54 cells are landmark or major. The 2020s row holds seven constructs and 11 open positions.

The families in brief. Several columns show a recognizable sequence. Market Orientation (column 4) runs from the marketing concept (Drucker, 1954; Levitt, 1960) through marketing culture (Deshpandé and Webster, 1989) to the twin defining statements of 1990 (Kohli and Jaworski, 1990; Narver and Slater, 1990), then proactive market orientation (Narver, Slater, and MacLachlan, 2004) and the question of whether the advantage is sustainable (Kumar et al., 2011). Satisfaction and Loyalty (column 9) moves from an early experiment (Cardozo, 1965) through the expectancy disconfirmation model (Oliver, 1980), the national index (Fornell, 1992; Fornell et al., 1996), the link to firm value (Anderson, Fornell, and Mazvancheryl, 2004; Fornell et al., 2006), and a quarter-century synthesis (Otto, Szymanski, and Varadarajan, 2020). Channels and Governance (column 13) is one of six families occupied in every era from the foundations on, running from Stern (1969) to omnichannel retailing (Verhoef, Kannan, and Inman, 2015), with the 2020s position open for platform and direct-to-consumer governance.

Blocks. Of the 98 constructs, 35 are formulation (20 content, 15 process) and 26 are implementation (8 content, 18 process). The remaining 37 fall outside the strategy decision itself: 15 are inputs, 16 are outputs, and 6 are environment. Two features of this distribution are worth noting. Implementation content, the block that holds the marketing programs and mix decisions, is the thinnest strategy block at eight cells, which matches the observation in Morgan et al. (2019) that implementation is under-studied relative to formulation. And outputs grow across the eras, from two cells in the foundational row to three in each of the last three, reflecting the accountability turn that gives the 2000s row its name.

Tiers. Fifty-seven constructs are marked as landmarks, 35 as major, and 6 as emerging or specialized. The landmark share is high because the one-construct-per-cell rule selects for the defining work in each family and era; the table is a map of peaks rather than of the whole terrain. The six emerging or specialized constructs split evenly: two foundational-era constructs whose streams were later absorbed by neighbors, two 2010s constructs still finding their footing, and two in the 2020s row, where influence cannot yet be judged.

Imported theories. The detached series lists 18 theories, placed beneath the families they feed. Reading it left to right traces the field's borrowing: industrial organization and growth strategy under strategic choice; the resource-based view, dynamic capabilities, and organizational learning under resources and orientation; contingency and configuration theory under organization; exit-voice-loyalty, agency, social exchange, and signaling under customer assets; transaction cost economics, resource dependence, and institutional theory under networks; network effects and stakeholder theory under context; and efficient markets under outcomes. The series shows that the marketing-strategy field's theoretical imports are concentrated in economics and organization theory, with psychology entering mainly through the customer-asset families.

Open positions. The 11 dashed cells in the 2020s row each carry a predicted construct. Read as a set, they describe one disruption arriving in each family at once: strategy for algorithm-mediated markets, platform and ecosystem rivalry, market orientation toward AI agents as buyers, human-AI market learning, generative AI in new product development, mix response under privacy limits, experience across human and AI touchpoints, customer-based firm valuation, platform and direct-to-consumer governance, resilient and sustainable value networks, and strategy under geopolitical fragmentation. The seven filled cells in the same row (marketing excellence, marketing agility, satisfaction payoff, brand activism, AI in marketing, better world marketing, and firm-value integration) suggest that the outcome and context families have already produced their 2020s statement, while neither Strategic Choice family has.

Three patterns. Three things become visible in the table that are hard to see in a list. First, families mature in a recurring order: a defining conceptual statement, then measurement, then a link to performance, and then integration with neighboring families. Market orientation, satisfaction, brand equity, and customer engagement all follow it, at different starting dates. Second, adjacent families move together. Learning and innovation (columns 5 and 6) reach their landmark cells within a decade of market orientation and cite it; relationships and customer equity (column 11) and brand assets (column 12) both reach their landmark cells in the early 1990s. Third, the imports shift over time. The foundational and planning eras draw on economics and management; the 2010s and 2020s draw on information systems and computer science, which the series does not yet list because those theories have not yet settled into anchor works.