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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 study aims to examine the phenomenon of self-perceived age (SPA) identity for Generation X (GenX) women in the UK. Squeezed between the more ubiquitous “boomer” and “millennial” cohorts, and now with both gender and age stigma-related challenges, this study looks to provide insights for understanding this group for marketing.

This study adopts an existential phenomenological approach using a hybrid structured/hermeneutic research design. Data is collected using solicited diary research (SDR) that elicits autoethnographic insights into the lived experiences of GenX women, these in the context of SPA.

For this group, the authors find age a gendered phenomenon represented via seven “age frames”, collectively an “organisation of experience”. Age identity appears not to have unified meaning but is contingent upon individuals and their experiences. These frames then provide further insights into how diarists react to the stigma of gendered ageism.

SDR appeals to participants who like completing diaries and are motivated by the research topic. This limits both diversity of response and sample size, but coincidentally enhances elicitation potential – outweighing, the authors believe, these constraints. The sample comprises UK women only.

This study acknowledges GenX women as socially real, but from an SPA perspective they are heterogeneous, and consequently distributed across many segments. Here, age is a psychographic, not demographic, variable – a subjective rather than chronological condition requiring a nuanced response from marketers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first formal study into how SPA identity is manifested for GenX women. Methodologically, this study uses e-journals/diaries, an approach not yet fully exploited in marketing research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which traditional marketing theory and practice can be applied in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and consider how owner-managers perceive their own role in marketing within a small business setting.

–A qualitative exploratory approach using semi-structured in-depth interviews amongst owner-managers of SMEs in the UK.

SME marketing is effective in that it embraces some relevant concepts of traditional marketing, tailors activities to match its customers and adds its own unique attribute of self-branding as bestowed by the SME owner-manager.

The study was limited to the UK and to a small sample of SMEs and as such the findings are not necessarily generalisable.

A “4Ps” model for SME self-branding is proposed, which encompasses the attributes of personal branding, (co)production, perseverance and practice.