This investigation studies the development of marketing in the Czech Republic. It discovers how marketing is practiced and explores the processes by which these practices are emerging. The context of transforming economies in Central and Eastern Europe is presented, focusing on the nature and role of management pre-transformation, the process of economic transformation and the subsequent identification of a potential role for marketing. The concept and nature of marketing as culture, strategy and tactics is considered, with the implementation of marketing associated with the development of a market orientation. Particular challenges for marketers operating in a transfoiming economy are discussed, leading to a questioning of the applicability of the western body of marketing knowledge within the context of a transforming economy. A social constructionist methodology is developed. However, the method of data collection is triangulated through depth interviews with employees in the case firms, supplementary interviews with Czech infoimants and fieldwork observations. The differing ways in which marketing is understood and practiced both across and within the case firms is examined. Factors identified as influential to the development of marketing are the education, experiences and motives of both marketers and owners/managers in the case fiims. Whilst external factors play some part in creating a climate for change, historical ways of thinking about marketing, traditional approaches to management and customary operating practices are important in explaining emerging marketing practices. Recurring themes lie in contextspecific marketing knowledge which is socially constructed. Based on the analysis of findings, a processual model of the development of marketing within firms operating in a transforming economy is proposed. This reflects the emergent and political nature of marketing management through which individuals continually interpret their changing worlds and, acting upon these interpretations, go on tofurther shape the development of marketing in their organisations.