The marketing manager as a jazz musician
Abstract
Purpose
Recently, organizational theorists and business thinkers have discovered the jazz metaphor and have employed this trope as an analogy to infer and describe best practices in the areas of organizational innovation and business strategy. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
The present paper extends and amplifies this insight in the area of marketing practice and compares the marketing manager to the jazz musician with special attention to the problem of introducing new offerings during the mature stage of the product life cycle – namely, the strategic issue that concerns most marketing managers most of the time.
Findings
Ultimately, the author is struck by the rather profound ways in which – true to the jazz metaphor – the marketing manager during the mature phase of the product life cycle resembles an improvising musician.
Originality/value
The present paper pursues this theme in connection with one particular aspect of marketing strategy – namely, the design and introduction of new offerings during the mature phase of the product life cycle.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Columbia Business School’s Faculty Research Fund.
Citation
Holbrook, M. (2015), "The marketing manager as a jazz musician", Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 33 No. 7, pp. 958-965. https://doi.org/10.1108/MIP-03-2015-0058
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited