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Describes an empirical study which aimed to compare the marketing practices used by high‐tech and low‐tech companies in the UK, and to attempt to explain any significant differences. Concludes that there is increasing awareness of the salience of marketing by UK high technology companies, though they are still not as market oriented as low‐tech ones. Suggests that broadly speaking results replicate earlier findings in US high technology firms, with the critical difference that the British companies rate both the possession of the latest technology and price competition less seriously than the American organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to reply to Andrew V. Abela's “Marketing and consumption: a response to O'Shaughnessy and O'Shaughnessy”: European Journal of Marketing. The article challenges a number of alleged claims in their paper “Marketing, the consumer society and hedonism”, and the authors' response seeks to present a systematic and, hopefully, intellectually coherent answer to Abela's critique.

The paper proceeds via discussion, argument and conceptual analysis. The three key areas of critique, which focus on the notion that these authors are somehow desensitized to the ethical significance of materialism and marketing's role in its causation, are examined in succession.

There can be no finality in this discussion, only further debate; nevertheless we believe we substantiate our claim that marketing alone does not “cause” materialism but that it is an inalienable fact of human nature. The first claim attributed to us was that the harms of materialism had not been demonstrated empirically. This misrepresents what we said and nowhere in the paper did we make such a claim. The second alleged claim is that we said it is unlikely that marketing causes materialism. Much here depends on how Abela is interpreting cause, since we do not deny marketing contributes by facilitating materialism but reject the idea that it is a necessary or sufficient condition for materialism. The third claim is that we see no alternatives to the current system that are consistent with human freedom. This paper acknowledges this charge, but questions whether strong consumer materialism is a major problem and maintains in any case that the alternative suggested by Abela is neither feasible nor viable.

This stands as part of the larger fields of marketing ethics, macromarketing and, more broadly, the “politics of consumption” (which would include such areas as globalisation); the merit/demerit of marketing as a transformative social force, and whether it is materialising peoples and cultures, is high on any future marketing research agenda. This article contributes to that debate.

If the ills of society are successfully attributed to the agency of marketing – and “materialism” is a convenient shorthand for these ills – then we invite legislative and other forms of retribution. It is important therefore that alternative perspectives get a hearing.

This topic is ultimately about the ethical status – and by extension social value – of marketing itself. By rigorous conceptual analysis and theoretic and literary support, these authors create a credible, though by no means uncritical, alibi for marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the “service dominant” perspective advocated by Vargo and Lusch and applauded by so many marketing academics in the USA is neither logically sound nor a perspective to displace others in marketing.

The paper is a conceptual analysis of the Vargo and Lusch paper that takes account of the implications of the service perspective being adopted as the perspective to replace all others.

The paper finds that the definition of services, seeking as it does to embrace all types of marketing, is too broad to have much operational meaning, while the focusing on activities rather than functions misdirects marketing altogether. Vargo and Lusch revive the claim that marketing should be viewed as a technology, the aim being to discover the techniques and rules (principles) applying to marketing. However, indifference to theoretical considerations encourages crudeness and the cultivation of ad hoc solutions. The Vargo and Lusch paper suggests that there is a one best way: a single unitary perspective for marketing. Instead there is a need for multiple perspectives in marketing, together with the methodological pluralism that it implies.

The paper does not claim to have teased out all the implications of the service‐dominant approach to marketing and other marketing academics might take into account other considerations such as the feasibility of the approach.

The paper suggests the abandonment of any approach that disdains theory and believes that the development of marketing technology is the way to go.

The paper offers original criticisms of the service‐dominant perspective and its value lies in holding marketing back from taking a backward step.

Companies facing disaster and needing turnaround have included the biggest and best names. This article looks at the four major criteria an organisation must satisfy to achieve successful turnarounds.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss exploratory research into the perceptions of British Muslims towards Islamist ideological messaging to contribute to the general debate on “radicalisation”.

Four focus groups were undertaken with a mixture of Bangladeshi and Pakistani British Muslims who were shown a selection of Islamist propaganda media clips, garnered from the internet.

The paper proposess that Islamist communications focus on eliciting change in emotional states, specifically inducing the paratelic‐excitement mode, by focusing around a meta‐narrative of Muslims as a unitary grouping self‐defined as victim to Western aggression. It concludes that British Muslim respondents were unsympathetic to the Islamist ideological messaging contained in the sample of propaganda clips.

The paper provides an insight into how British Muslims might respond to Islamist communications, indicating that, while most are not susceptible to inducement of paratelic‐excitement, others are likely to be, dependent on which genre of clip is used, the messages contained therein, and who that clip is targeted at.

This paper is a rejoinder to Lusch and Vargo's defense of their service‐dominant logic paper against criticism.

The paper responds to Lusch and Vargo's defense and criticism of the initial article primarily through examining the logic of their case.

The paper finds that both the charges and the arguments against the criticism have no merit.

The paper offers guidance as to the approach needed to advance the study of service marketing. This rejects the notion that viewing all businesses as service entities is a progressive approach but recommends a disjunctive definition of service, which would throw up service‐categories that needed to be studied in their own right if progress is to be made.

The paper suggests that Lusch and Vargo's S‐D‐dominant logic is unlikely to be practically fruitful while remaining theoretically limited.

The annexation of business promotion methods by candidates has revolutionised political advocacy in America, with electronic technology making the traditions of democratic campaigning anachronistic. The consequence of political marketing is a re‐defined democracy in which politicians are more symbolic but less powerful than heretofore, and the principal catalyst of change is television advertising.

Suggests that although social marketing has long been seen as the modern way of communicating social agendas, it may be displaced by a more polemical and manipulative paradigm, social propaganda, and that this rivalry is intimately connected with the rise of single issue pressure groups and concomitant decline in conventional political participation. While this thesis is not proved in any rigorous sense, does attempt to achieve a secondary objective, that of sorting out a very real conceptual confusion between social marketing and social propaganda, establishing their boundaries and nuancing the subtleties of each by comparison with a conceptually distinct other.

The use of direct mail in American political campaigns is examined. Direct mail has the capacity to attract and retain the loyalty of targeted groups, more so than other mediums. The planning of a direct mail campaign and deficiencies in current direct mail strategies are also examined.

Suggests that the theory and practice of new models for strategic analysis of business/product areas are based on a set of premisses. Looks at four strategic models: the Boston Consulting Group matrix, the General Electric “business screen”, Michael Porter's structural approach; and the evolutionary stages. Asks if these can be applied with equal rigour in countries other than the USA. Remarks that these strategies can only be applied elsewhere in a modified form owing to the difference in business systems and the culture of which such a system is an expression.