It is presumptuous to call these philosophers the first marketing theoreticians, but systematized ideas about marketing are older than one might think. In 1831 the British archbishop and scholar Whately already suggested that in economic
science attention should be focused on human exchange behaviour or ‘catallactics’. 48 The hour of the birth of modern marketing is nonetheless controversial. Some believe it was in 1960, when McCarthy named the 4 P’s for the first time, while especially in Germany the year 1955 is suggested, when Gutenberg published his ‘Instruments of Sales-Policy’.49