The lessons of history

Abstract

Purpose

To examine the lessons that may be learned by both academics and practitioners from a dispassionate review of the history of the marketing profession.

Design/methodology/approach

One of the founding fathers of marketing as a subject for academic study in the UK thinks aloud about what he has observed during more than 30 years in a leading UK business school.

Findings

The conclusion is that marketing academics exhibit one negative feature of scholarship: failure to take the historical perspective. A mutated variety of the notorious “marketing myopia” causes them to disregard anything written in what they regard as the distant past, and, therefore, to fail to see the larger picture.

Research limitations/implications

Academic researchers in marketing need to look for more basic principles and better rules of thumb, rather than esoteric irrrelevances fit only to grace the pages of the Journal of Obscurity.

Practical implications

If academics thus take a narrow and currently fashionable view, future marketing strategists, at present their students in graduate business schools, will in all probability do likewise.

Originality/value

A “viewpoint” from a privileged vantage point on the high ground.

Citation

Baker, M.J. (2006), "The lessons of history", Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 7-14. https://doi.org/10.1108/02634500610641525