Marketing Renaissance: Opportunities and Imperatives for Improving Marketing Thought, Practice, and Infrastructure

Abstract

My three-year term as editor of Journal of Marketing concludes with the October 2005 issue. On the basis of my interactions with various people in the marketing community, I believe that marketing science and practice are in transition, bringing change to the content and boundaries of the discipline. Thus, I invited some distinguished scholars to contribute short essays on the current challenges, opportunities, and imperatives for improving marketing thought and practice. Each author chose his or her topic and themes. However, in a collegial process, the authors read and commented on one another's essays, after which each author had an opportunity to revise his or her essay. The result is a thoughtful and constructive set of essays that are related to one another in interesting ways and that should be read together. I have grouped the essays as follows: •What is the domain of marketing? This question is addressed in four essays by Stephen W. Brown, Frederick E. Webster Jr., Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp, and William L. Wilkie. •How has the marketing landscape (i.e., content) changed? This question is addressed in two essays, one coauthored by Jagdish N. Sheth and Rajendra S. Sisodia and the other by Roger A. Kerin. •How should marketing academics engage in research, teaching, and professional activities? This question is addressed in five essays by Debbie MacInnis; Leigh McAlister; Jagmohan S. Raju; Ronald J. Bauerly, Don T. Johnson, and Mandeep Singh; and Richard Staelin. Another interesting way to think about the essays, as Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp suggests, is to group the essays according to whether they address issues of content, publishing, or impact (see Table 1 ). These 11 essays strike a common theme: They urge marketers—both scientists and practitioners—to expand their horizontal vision. What do I mean by horizontal vision? In The Great Influenza, Barry (2004) describes the enormous strides that were made in medical science early in the twentieth century. His depiction of William Welch, an extremely influential scientist who did not (as a laboratory researcher) generate important findings, includes a characterization of the “genius” that produces major scientific achievements. The research he did was first-rate. But it was only first-rate—thorough, rounded, and even irrefutable, but not deep enough or provocative enough or profound enough to set himself or others down new paths, to show the world in a new way, to make sense out of great mysteries…. To do this requires a certain kind of genius, one that probes vertically and sees horizontally. Horizontal vision allows someone to assimilate and weave together seemingly unconnected bits of information. It allows an investigator to see what others do not see and to make leaps of connectivity and creativity. Probing vertically, going deeper and deeper into something, creates new information. (p. 60) At my request, each author has provided thoughtful and concrete suggestions for how marketing academics and practitioners, both individually and collectively (through our institutions), can work to improve our field. Many of their suggestions urge people and institutions to expand their horizontal vision and make connections, thereby fulfilling their potential to advance the science and practice of marketing. In his essay, Richard Staelin writes (p. 22), “I believe that it is possible to influence directly the generation and adoption of new ideas.” I agree. I ask the reader to think about the ideas in these essays and to act on them. Through our actions, we shape our future. —Ruth N. Bolton

Consumer Complaints and Company Market Value

“…This context, resembling a homogeneous oligopoly market structure, has been theoretically shown to be an interesting setting to study complaint issues (Fornell & Wernerfelt, 1988). Finally, previous academic studies have focused mainly on the Northern Hemisphere context, especially the United States (S. W. Brown et al, 2005). Our study also adds to the literature by looking at the complaint issue in specific markets and in a developing country.…”

Commercial Communication in the Digital Age : Information or Disinformation?

“…Just as the Service-Dominant Logic functions rhetorically as an inevitable, evolutionary, unifying answer to the fragmentation effecting marketing theory at the end of the twentieth century, so too is the co-creation of value functioning within it as an answer to the creative power that consumers already have. As marketing's relevance has begun to be increasingly questioned in the faculty lounge and the boardroom (Anderson 1994;Clark et al 2014;Katsikeas et al 2004;Kerin 2005;Park et al 2012;Sheth, Sisodiam 2005), so academic marketing has had to seek signs of such relevance and embed them within its formulation. By adopting into the firm's strategy something that consumers have already been doing (discussing, loving, hating, adapting and re-purposing products and services) the service perspective's formulation of the co-creation of value can be seen as actively responding to the change in the balance of power (and in the location of value).…”

A Contribuição da Produção Científica em Marketing para as Ciências Sociais

“…Tais dados sugerem uma supervalorização dada pela Administração à produção metodológica de Marketing em detrimento à teoria e aos temas particulares da área. Essa ênfase em metodologia parece ser congruente com a realizada pela própria área de Marketing (Brown et al, 2005), especificamente no que diz respeito à modelagem (Davis, Golicic, Boerstler, Choi, & Oh, 2013). Além disso, cabe notar que estes dez artigos respondem aproximadamente por 13% de todas as citações recebidas pelo Marketing na Administração, assim como por quase 10% de todas as citações recebidas no conjunto total das áreas.…”

“…Os artigos de Marketing mais individualmente citados por essa área são relacionados a cuidados metodológicos, modelagem e estatística. Embora esse dado denote um reconhecimento positivo do rigor metodológico adotado na disciplina (Brown et al, 2005), ele também preocupa porque pode estar relacionado a uma simultânea desvalorização da produção teórica de Marketing. Cabe notar, porém, que esse resultado é referente às citações pela Administração e não pelas outras áreas, que citam muito pouco a produção sobre método em Marketing.…”