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The purpose of this paper is to comment on the differences in perceptions that exist between academic and professional marketing researchers, as creators of new marketing knowledge, and explore how academics and practitioners can work together better on areas of mutual interest or separately on areas where their interests do not coincide.

The approach is via two focus groups, one with researchers in marketing from universities and one with commercial market researchers, and via online surveys of the same target groups, with 638 respondents in all.

The study indicates that the two sample groups have relatively congruent views about the advantages and disadvantages of each other's approach to research but both groups believe they could do more to make their research more comprehensible and accessible to each other.

The empirical study was conducted in the UK only, and the response rate from the university marketing research community was disappointingly low. These represent limitations on the generalisability of the findings.

It is argued that marketing research can be undertaken separately by academics and practitioner researchers but that joint working between academic and commercial marketing researchers represents another dimension to marketing research which could be facilitated by the creation of joint initiatives, including industry‐inspired academic‐practitioner research projects and the development of government‐funded academic‐practitioner research projects, building on both groups' unique sets of skills.

The paper reports on the outcome of an empirical study that has implications for the conduct of marketing research in universities and market research agencies.

Concern has been expressed by business and marketing scholars that academic research in these fields should be made more relevant to managers. In this paper the focus in on the views of marketing managers concerning the relevance of academic research to them. The empirical context of the work is business‐to‐business marketing. The experienced marketing practitioners interviewed knew very little about the current state of academic research in marketing, and considered that academic researchers did not understand the realities of business life and could not communicate effectively with managers. Marketing practitioners prefer to work with consultants, whom they consider understand business realities better and are more effective communicators. The paper discusses the barriers that marketing academies will have to overcome if they are to make their research more relevant to practitioners.

This article aims to dispel the perception that academic libraries do not need to market their services and resources; to acquaint academic librarians to the concept of word‐of‐mouth marketing and its potential for academic libraries; and to share a word‐of‐mouth marketing academic library success story.

Includes an introduction to the concept of word‐of‐mouth marketing and its application to academic libraries. Also includes how one academic library successfully employed this marketing technique.

Provides an introduction to the word‐of‐mouth marketing strategy and its usefulness for academic libraries. Shares a real‐life success story of academic library word‐of‐mouth marketing.

Useful as an introduction for academic librarians to a specific type of marketing strategy that works well in a college/university setting and provides some successful techniques of word‐of‐mouth marketing for academic libraries.

Helps fill a void relative to using marketing strategies in an academic library setting and offers suggestions on how to do this successfully.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the value of marketing in academic libraries and how the marketing concept is applied in practice to marketing academic library services through the experiences of academic libraries across the USA.

The paper focuses on using marketing as a managerial tool to accomplish strategic organizational goals and objectives, discusses challenges and opportunities in academic library marketing, presents examples demonstrating innovative methods that academic libraries have used to market their images and services, and offers suggestions for developing marketing plans and strategies.

The paper finds that market research allows libraries to understand better the points of view of their student and faculty library users, as well as the perspectives of campus administrations and the community external to the college. The result is that the library is more successful in gaining visibility and support for its efforts, and library users are more successful in making the best use of the services available to them to meet their academic and research goals.

The paper offers practical solutions for academic libraries in the global community.

“Research has a value that does not depend on how true it is” is a quote from Griseri's call for management researchers to concern themselves less with scientific validity and more with relevance, striking a chord within the marketing academy in the light of criticism of the lack of progress in building a body of theory in marketing and creating more links with practice. Some have warned of the dangers of too closely following practitioners’ agendas. This paper debates these issues and proposes that the academic marketing community should recognise the value of getting closer to practitioners. After reviewing literature on the issue, the paper makes the case for an overtly recognised applied researcher culture to sit alongside pure research colleagues. A theoretical framework is developed and applied to a “template” for research design that will allow researchers to generate and communicate knowledge more effectively.

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.

BUSINESS SCHOOL GRAFFITI is a highly personal and revealing account of the first ten years (1965–1975) at Britain’s University Business Schools. The progress achieved is documented in a whimsical fashion that makes it highly readable. Gordon Wills has been on the inside throughout the decade and has played a leading role in two of the major Schools. Rather than presuming to present anything as pompous as a complete history of what has happened, he recalls his reactions to problems, issues and events as they confronted him and his colleagues. Lord Franks lit a fuse which set a score of Universities and even more Polytechnics alight. There was to be a bold attempt to produce the management talent that the pundits of the mid‐sixties so clearly felt was needed. Buildings, books, teachers who could teach it all, and students to listen and learn were all required for the boom to happen. The decade saw great progress, but also a rapid decline in the relevancy ethic. It saw a rapid withering of interest by many businessmen more accustomed to and certainly desirous of quick results. University Vice Chancellors, theologians and engineers all had to learn to live with the new and often wealthier if less scholarly faculty members who arrived on campus. The Research Councils had to decide how much cake to allow the Business Schools to eat. Most importantly, the author describes the process of search he went through as an individual in evolving a definition of his own subject and how it can best be forwarded in a University environment. It was a process that carried him from Technical College student in Slough to a position as one of the authorities on his subject today.

The paper aims to establish which formally and informally published sources of knowledge were mainly used by executives in the computer service industry to obtain knowledge of current developments in the field of marketing and to examine the purposes for which the knowledge gathered from these sources was employed.

Marketing managers in 141 large computer services businesses completed a questionnaire concerning the extents to which they used books, marketing magazines, academic journals, and grey literature (GL) for instrumental, conceptual, and symbolic purposes. Four “motivating factors” (e.g. occupational learning orientation) were examined plus three other influences (e.g. length of time in a marketing role). The possible consequences of the extensive use of various sources were explored.

Only 2 per cent of the sample read academic marketing journals, and just 3 per cent looked at marketing textbooks. However, 89 per cent of the sample accessed (mainly internet‐based) grey marketing literature and 62 per cent read marketing magazines. Nearly, one in six of the respondents stated that they had read practitioner “how to do” marketing books. Several hypothesised independent variables exerted positive and significant impacts on the degrees to which magazines; GL and practitioner books were employed to obtain marketing knowledge.

It was not possible to examine exactly why a particular knowledge source was preferred for a specific purpose. Potential connections between past academic research outputs and the contents of contemporary grey marketing literature and articles in marketing magazines could not be investigated. The results imply that GL must be recognised as a vital source of marketing knowledge. Issues relating to the codification and wider distribution of GL, copyright, the shortage of specialised GL bibliographies in the marketing area, and the long‐term availability of materials in electronic form need to be addressed.

This was the first empirical study to connect the use of marketing knowledge sources to the purposes (instrumental, conceptual, symbolic) for which the knowledge contained within them was required.

The purpose of this article is to present an inside look at the history of a little‐known but interesting initiative in the marketing field, one that involved the infusion of marketing thought into public policy decision‐making in the USA. It aims to trace the interesting tale of how marketing academics came to be included in the activities of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) through the FTC's “Marketing Academic Consultancy Program” (MACP) during the 1970s. This story also aims to include descriptions of the contributions made by those marketing academics and how those scholars were later phased out of the FTC.

An autobiographical approach is used since each of the authors was personally involved in the MACP. As participants in the program and as scholars whose careers were thereafter tremendously affected by that participation, these personal accounts provide considerable insight into the impact on both FTC operations and on marketing academic thought itself.

Over the decade of the 1970s some 30 marketing academics participated in this program, with considerable impact on both FTC operations and on marketing academic thought itself. Reflecting positive impact within public policy, for example, was a massive increase in the FTC budget for marketing and consumer research activities – from essentially zero at the start of the program to some $ 1 million in 1978. Benefits also flowed back into academia, as this program formed a prime basis for the development of today's “Marketing and Society” research area.

Although there are histories of the FTC, this is an original, first‐hand account of a little‐known era during which marketing academics and public policy decision‐makers were given a unique opportunity to work together and learn from each other. It offers personal insights into the workings of this innovative program and the benefits that accrued for both the FTC and for the marketing discipline.

This research paper aims to examine the global trends in publishing in the leading marketing journals between 1964 and 2008, focusing on how public policy intervention in the assessment and funding of academic research has influenced Britain's relative productivity in the world's leading marketing journals.

The method was an audit of contributions to the leading journals based on the authors' affiliation, country of origin and country in which they obtained their doctoral training.

The results show that the proportion of leading marketing publications by authors affiliated to British universities have held steady at about 2 per cent, while the productivity of several other countries has accelerated past Britain. However, to retain that share, Britain has increasingly depended upon importing people whose PhD is not British. This contrasts with some other European countries that are now more productive than Britain, but mainly recruit locals with local PhDs. The pattern of decline in the UK is related to the impact of Britain's research assessment exercise and the continuation of relatively weak social science research training.

The analysis is limited by only looking at one academic discipline and only the top few academic journals in the field.

The findings have implications at several levels. At a national policy level it questions the value of the research assessment exercises that appear to have presided over a decline in research productivity. For institutions, it questions the value in investing in developing local talent when success has come to those who buy talent internationally. Perhaps, the major implication arises from Britain's academic productivity declining while neighbouring countries have grown in international excellence.

At a time when the continuation of expensive university research assessments is being questioned the research findings add value to the current debate in showing how that very process has accompanied academic decline.