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In this paper we (a pracademic, a practitioner, and an academic) aim to explore the academic/practitioner gap in social marketing and offer recommendations to close it, while amplifying existing examples of best practice from within the field. We also propose a research agenda to spur dialog and guide further investigations in this area. Insights from prior research, coupled with the co-authors’ experience and observations, indicate that a disconnect does exist between academia and practice within social marketing, though it is admittedly and unsurprisingly not uniform across contexts and disciplinary areas. Given social marketing’s identity as a practice-oriented field, there are many existing examples of academic/practitioner collaboration and the successful linkage of theory and practice that deserve to be amplified. However, the challenges associated with the very different systems and structures affecting both worlds mean the disconnect is problematic enough to warrant systematic change to ensure the two worlds are more aligned.

This paper (a pracademic, a practitioner and an academic) explores the academic/practitioner gap in social marketing and offer recommendations to close it, while amplifying existing examples of best practice from within the field. The authors also propose a research agenda to spur dialog and guide further investigations in this area.

The authors suggest five key reasons that focus should be placed upon closing the academic/practitioner gap in social marketing: demonstrating societal value by contributing to practice; embedding and developing theories in practice; adding to the social marketing literature; contributing to social marketing teaching; and communicating the value and effectiveness of social marketing. To close the gap, the authors propose specific recommendations within four broad areas: marketing the academia and practitioner collaboration offer; building ongoing relationships; creating collaborative partnerships; and changing the publishing model ensuring communications are accessible to all. They also suggest ways for social marketing associations and peak bodies to play a role.

The concept of a disconnect between academia and practice is by no means new; it has been a pervasive issue across disciplines for decades. However, this issue has not been the subject of much discussion within the social marketing literature. Recommendations outlined in this paper serve as a starting point for discussion. The authors also acknowledge that due to long standing “bright spots” in the field, numerous examples currently exist. They place an emphasis upon highlighting these examples while illuminating a path forward.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a growing technology impacting several business fields. The agricultural sector is facing several challenges, which may be supported by the use of such a new advanced technology. The aim of the paper is to map the state-of-the-art of AI applications in agriculture, their advantages, barriers, implications and the ability to lead to new business models, depicting a future research agenda.

A structured literature review has been conducted, and 37 contributions have been analyzed and coded using a detailed research framework.

Findings underline the multiple uses and advantages of AI in agriculture and the potential impacts for farmers and entrepreneurs, even from a sustainability perspective. Several applications and algorithms are being developed and tested, but many barriers arise, starting from the lack of understanding by farmers and the need for global investments. A collaboration between scholars and practitioners is advocated to share best practices and lead to practical solutions and policies. The promising topic of new business models is still under-investigated and deserves more attention from scholars and practitioners.

The paper reports the state-of-the-art of AI in agriculture and its impact on the development of new business models. Several new research avenues have been identified.

In marketing, as in other areas of management studies, there is a feeling abroad that lines of communication need to be improved between those who work largely in the academic sphere and the practitioner community. Introduces the papers presented in this special issue, which explore the nature of the “academic‐practitioner divide”, investigates the reasons for it and the barriers to communication that exist, and put forward ideas for improving the effectiveness of academic‐practitioner collaboration. However, members of the academic community should carefully avoid a headlong and uncritical rush for managerial relevance, since their claim to a unique position in the knowledge production process relies on maintaining objectivity and a certain distance from the day‐to‐day pressures of marketing management.

This study aims to investigate marketing managers’ views on the existence and nature of the academic–practitioner gap in the branding domain.

Using a purposive sampling method, the researchers conduct semi-structured qualitative interviews with 20 experienced marketing managers from a wide range of industries and organisations, whose roles are focussed on the planning, implementation and management of broad marketing and branding strategies.

Branding practitioners have little or no contact with academics and their theories-in-use with regard to brand management suggest they do not consider academic research relevant to their work.

The process of describing and explaining the gap provides valuable insights into bridging the gap; it provides actionable branding strategies that include raising awareness, building relationships, improving the benefits offer and communicating more effectively.

This research has practical implications for branding academics. The interviewed practitioners confirm the gap, viewing it as academics’ (not practitioners’) problem and responsibility. They characterise it as a branding problem that academics can overcome using branding strategies, to establish themselves as credible sources of branding expertise for practitioners. Key areas for increasing collaboration stem from practitioners’ desire for independent, credible, ethical and timely third-party advice on branding issues; relevant, timely and shorter professional branding education across their organisations; and closer connections with universities to identify new branding talent and ideas.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to empirically examine and recommend solutions to the academic-practitioner gap in the branding domain by studying marketing professionals with branding responsibilities, using in-depth interviews.

This paper seeks to investigate what the marketing field can learn, with regard to the academic/practitioner divide, from other management disciplines that have a range of different relationships with their respective practitioners.

The authors carried out 68 interviews of academics, practitioners and experts/consultants involved in academic/practitioner engagement from the marketing, accountancy, strategic management and organisation studies disciplines.

The most interesting aspects relate to two areas: exclusive engagement (as exemplified in accountancy) versus inclusive engagement (as exemplified in strategic management), and the practices associated with participative research (as exemplified in organisation studies). The appropriate approach to engagement will depend on the nature of the relationship between the academic field and its particular community of practitioners.

The research is limited to academics, practitioners and experts/consultants operating from the UK. However, the findings on the challenges of engagement are consistent with those reported in the extant literature.

The first implication relates to defining what we mean when we talk about “practice”. The literature is often vague with regard to this. Does it relate to functional professionals or a far wider group of non‐specialists? A useful starting point might be to conduct an audit to clarify where aspects of marketing theory are relevant. The second implication relates to what needs to be done to engage with non‐inclusive groups of practitioners. Some conditions required for success are outlined.

The paper explores a knowledge gap in relation to the practice of engagement. It identifies why it is important to debate the nature of the practitioner community, and provides some guidelines for effective engagement.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the reasons for the continuing “gap” between UK retail academic research and practice. A relationship marketing (RM) lens, focussing on relationship antecedents, is used to develop a deeper understanding of the barriers to collaboration and propose new solutions to close the gap.

The paper adopts a qualitative methodology to compile the evidence, using multiple data sources to identify the dynamics of the retail academic-practitioner divide.

The research illustrates a marked absence of the majority of the customer focussed, seller focussed and dyadic antecedents, essential for effective relational exchanges, and highlights that at the heart of the problem lies a lack of shared understanding of mutual relationship benefits with academics currently neither motivated nor incentivised to develop such relationships.

Further research is needed to explore what characterises a successful sustainable research relationship. There is also a pressing need to understand the experience, skills and knowledge of “boundary spanners” who operate successfully in both academic and business cultures.

Universities should adopt a strategic approach towards building relationships with retailers based upon relationship antecedents. Reward structures should be developed to encourage academics to develop research relationships. Resources should be allocated to better defining and communicating the benefits of a university research relationship with retailers.

There has been limited empirical research on the academic-practitioner gap within the context of the UK retail sector. The RM lens draws attention to new insights about barriers to successful relationships and generates concrete ideas for closing the gap moving forward.

This article aims to explore dimensions and tensions in the relationship between theory (usually produced by academics) and practice (the domain, normally of practitioners) in human resource development (HRD).

The paper examines, from a conceptual perspective, the nature of mode 2 research, where knowledge is generated in the context of multi‐stakeholder teams (academics and practitioners) that transcend the boundaries of traditional disciplines, working on problems to be found in working life.

Mode 2 research has been seen in dichotomous terms of theory versus practice, referred to in various ways such as: the research‐practice gap; the implementation gap; the research‐practice divide; and the theory‐practice void. This gap is also typified by mode 1 research, an approach which adopts the principles of “normal science” and which generates results, the main beneficiaries of which are the academic community. The authors forward mode 2 research as an approach that requires both academic rigour and practical relevance. The article presents and critically evaluates a number of examples of academic‐practitioner partnerships in action in order to highlight both the potential and the challenges for the development of mode 2 research. It also recommends strategies for the advancement of mode 2 research, including getting academics to attune themselves more closely with the needs of practitioners, encouraging academics to write for practitioner journals, and the use of the kinds of research methodologies that can generate richer stories and cases that resonate with practitioner interests. Practitioners, however, need research that has a practical focus and which can be applied immediately.

This is a conceptual paper that draws on secondary examples to support the authors' contentions, making it appropriate to gain further background information on bridging the gap between theory and practice.

The paper critically evaluates a number of examples of academic‐practitioner partnerships in action.

This paper provides an in‐depth analysis of the challenges of undertaking effective and robust practice‐based research, through articulating philosophical differences in research approaches and discussing tensions between academic and practitioner needs.

To present a point of view from the marketing practitioner's standpoint on the “academic/practitioner divide” vigorously discussed by authors collected together in a Special Issue in 2004.

Commissioned as a viewpoint, with permission to “think aloud”.

Argues that marketing practitioners are likely to cite time‐poverty as their reason for not taking the initiative in reading the academic journals in the marketing management field or forging links with the business school community. They also sense that they would have to justify the use of academic sources in the preparation of strategies and plans, as distinct from what is in the “standard pool of knowledge” or the successfully popularised semi‐textbooks to be found at amazon.com or in airport executive lounges.

Rationalisations of this kind may be a subconscious excuse for inertia, and marketing strategists should resist their power to maintain the division between themselves and their natural intellectual collaborators.

Challenges the orthodox view that academics themselves are responsible for the failure of practitioners to engage in dialogue with them.

The purpose of the study is to identify and discuss critical aspects of the academic/practitioner gap and suggest how to make marketing research more relevant.

The study uses data from an earlier study of eight qualitative interviews conducted with business-to-business (B2B) marketing practitioners and from an earlier quantitative study among 128 academics and 510 marketing research practitioners. The data are re-analyzed for this article.

Results show that academics and practitioners agree that academic research should be of more practical value. However, their priorities differ. For academics, publishing in refereed journals is the first priority and influencing practice is of much lower priority, while practitioners are not interested in the methodological and theoretical advances of marketing research; their priority is to satisfy day-to-day practical needs. Hence, practitioners have no interest in academic journals. The academic reward system tends to reinforce this divide because academic career progression depends substantially on the production of refereed journal articles.

Much prior consideration has been given to how academic journals can be made more relevant to practitioners, which is a desirable goal. However, a more fruitful approach for B2B academics would be to embrace new technologies such as blogging and social media to reach practitioners through their preferred channels. If greater relevance is to be achieved, then consideration needs to be given to the views of doctoral students, and to doctoral training processes in B2B marketing.

The study provides academics with guidance concerning how marketing research can have a greater effect on the practice of marketing.

The study contributes to the research base by identifying and discussing critical aspects of the academic/practitioner gap. The study also offers insights into how managerial relevance in marketing research can, practically, be improved.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a course in data mining as an example of an interdisciplinary mechanism of bridging the academic/practitioner divide in marketing.

The academic/practitioner divide in marketing education is first examined along with current challenges for increasing curricular relevancy. Alternative approaches for pedagogically satisfying marketing academicians and, at the same time, meeting practitioner needs is explored.

Developing a course in data mining is presented as a holistic way of providing subject knowledge in relationship marketing, information technology and analytics coupled with experiential learning.

The course in data mining provides practical skills in information technology, marketing analytics and problem‐solving that provide students with a strong point of differentiation in the job market that has proven attractive to employers.

This paper provides a description of a course in data mining offering that helps students position themselves at the nexus of marketing, information technology, and analytics.