Commodification of marketing theory

1
Commodification of marketing theory

• Macro Marketing
• Theme 3, Topic 7

2
Key themes

• The evolving market for marketing knowledge
• The ends of marketing authors and authority
• Unintended consequences

3
The evolving market for marketing knowledge

• 50 years of printed literature
• Provision of marketing education has expanded
  growth of general interest
• Marketing academics coming under greater pressure
  to produce, distribute, disseminate information
• Books, journals, repackaged ideas

4
The ends of marketing authors and authority

• Ideas borrowed from other disciplines
• Ideas borrowed from other authors within the same
  discipline
• authors/researchers mine the opinions or observed
  behaviour of our respondents and edit, translate
  or re-package them to suit our analytical purposes

5
The ends of marketing authors and authority

• To form persuasive arguments to help advance our
  own publishing career
• Marketing academics are not only producers of
  information about knowledge but merchandisers,
  retailer and consumers of it
• Rely on the commodity of information about
  marketing knowledge to ply our trade
• fast moving current generalisations !

6
Unintended consequences

• Privileged position of marketing academics in the
  knowledge creation chain is being decentralised
  and de-hierarchized
• The shelf-life of marketing knowledge will
  continue to decline

7
Value to practitioners

• Academic research, focus on methodology
• removed from practitioners
• academic treadmill driven by excessive
  accountability burdens - reduces the quality and
  originality of academic research constrains
  interaction with various communities (Tapp 2005)

8
Pure versus applied research

• Applied research valuable to policy makers
• Culture of academic marketing is wrapped up on
  notions of marketing as a pure subject, similar
  to physics, history
• In universities traditional subjects are
  considered more valuable than applied ones
• Little or no applied research is published in
  top journals - required by academic
  measurements (Tapp 2005)

9
Positivism

• Top journals publish papers based on positivistic
  views of the world
• Assumes that
• people, organisations, marketing entities exist
  as precise, concrete entities that we can all
  share a common understanding of
• the marketing universe has an underlying order
  that we seek to understand

10
Positivism

• Assumes that
• this order allows us to predict outcomes of
  marketing and consumer behaviour
• through observational and (usually) survey data
  we can expose these underlying orders

11
However, in practice...

• Theories and fact are less easily separated in
  social science than in physical science
• People are different from chemical elements
• Explanation of human behaviour go beyond the
  physically observable
• Data collection in human sciences is a personal
  interaction, so the researcher will have an
  influence on the research outcomes

12
Why practitioners dont read academic articles

• Researching the obvious
• Ignoring context
• Incomprehensible language
• Using a multivariate sledgehammer to crack a nut
• Researching the arcane and obscure
• (Tapp 2005)

13
A better way to do things..

• Researchers focus on actual practices - local
  contexts rather than attention to grand theory
• Applied research should get much closer to the
  messy world of the practitioner and consumer
• Create a platform in which specific marketing
  knowledge can be locally generated (Tapp 2005)