Search results

Felicitous writing is enormously important. However, the art of writing well is rarely addressed by marketing scholars. This paper seeks to argue that the marketing academy has much to learn from historiography, a sub‐discipline devoted to the explication of historical writing.

Although it is primarily predicated on published works, this paper is not a conventional literature review. It relies, rather, on the classic historical method of “compare and contrast”. It considers parallels between the paired disciplines yet notes where marketing and history diverge in relation to literary styles and scientific aspirations.

It is concluded that marketing writing could benefit from greater emphasis on “character” and “storytelling”. These might help humanise a mode of academic communication that is becoming increasingly abstruse and ever‐more unappealing to its readership.

If its argument is accepted by the academic community – and, more importantly, acted upon – this paper should transform the writing of marketing. Although the academic reward systems and power structures of marketing make revolutionary change unlikely, a “scholarly spring” is not inconceivable.

The paper's originality rests in the observation that originality is unnecessary. All of the literary‐cum‐stylistic issues raised in this paper have already been tackled by professional historians. Whether marketers are willing to learn from their historical brethren remains to be seen.

Reading and writing are crucial components of the research process and academic life as a whole. The purpose of this paper is to ask if conventional reading and writing practices are fit for marketing purpose.

The paper consists of an extended autobiographical essay, which reflects on the relevance of academic research output. The concerns of marketing thought leaders are also incorporated as required.

Academic articles are unreadable and unread. This is due to extant writing practices which result in characterless papers with little reader appeal.

The best way forward is to look back at the approaches that prevailed prior to marketing's mid‐'60s “scientific revolution”. If adopted, they'll make learned research papers and monographs much more readable than they are at present.

If marketing academics embrace this paper's recommendations, their writings are more likely to be read and acted upon by practitioners, policy makers and other important stakeholders.

The style of the article is in keeping with the content. It demonstrates as well as describes.

This paper is about marketing accounting. It is about reading marketing writing and writing marketing reading and what calls them into being. It is about our “ab‐outing” practices; those signifying practices by means of which we week to capture a piece of the world and show it off, wrapped in a suitable tale of discovery, in a cabinet in the museum of marketing knowledge. You may wonder why should we bother, since without those representation practices and textual conventions how could we be sure that the objects on display were real, not fakes; that our representations were true images of objects in the real world, not mere simulations of simulations? Do you find comfort in the view that marketing discourse organizes in such a way as to sustain the convention that objects in the marketing world “out there” are antecedent to our images of them? And does it discomfort you to recognize the ideas of Garfinkel (1967) being used to suggest that marketing accounts are constituent features of the settings we make observable? Whatever your answers, how textual organization persuades and makes real is a point worth considering. I think this is a timely project, as we warm to qualitative methods, especially ethnography, on the (mis)understanding that they can reveal truer, deeper, thicker insights into the real world. For it is not possible to avoid the problem of representation in this way, as Geertz (1973) reminds us in his invitation to reflexive ethnographic inquiry.

To review and provide a new perspective on how Wroe Alderson contributed to marketing theory, and rekindle interest in his lines of research and the further development of marketing theory.

A metaphor is woven into the paper to provide a new way of thinking about Alderson and his work. This provides an alternative to the more traditional analyses and comparison of Alderson's work that suggests new linkages and ways of looking at his theories, constructs and concepts.

Alderson was a creative, hard working, practical marketing theorist with a drive to develop a theory of marketing. He challenged underlying assumptions of marketing, and set the discipline on a new course. Alderson himself worked on a general theory of marketing, and also inspired others to work on marketing theories. His approach and ideas still have value to today's marketing scholars.

Marketing scholars will benefit by taking up Alderson's work where he left off, as well as integrating the research completed since his death with his theory of marketing.

This paper uses a unique method to look at one of the key influencers of marketing; a metaphor encourages one to look at how Alderson was able to significantly impact the field of marketing, and suggests that there is still value in his work to today's marketing scholars. It also evokes ways that marketing theory can be further developed.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the writing style of Stanley C. Hollander, in order to better understand the power of his prose.

A line‐by‐line literary analysis of Hollander's publications, with a view to detecting his stylistic “signature” or “fingerprint”.

Four key elements are integral to Hollander's writing style – interrogatives, inventories, iconoclasm and irony. His single most characteristic literary device is litotes, a mode of ironic understatement.

Literary analysis is inherently idiosyncratic and tends to reflect the perspective of the interpreter. Another analyst is sure to find different features in Hollander's corpus (though this is less a methodological shortcoming than a testament to the richness of Hollander's writings).

All academics are writers and, by better understanding the technique of a much admired stylist, everyone's publications can be improved.

The marketing field established important institutions – college courses, teachable texts, professional associations, and regular conferences – during the first three decades of the twentieth century, but did not fully mature as a scholarly discipline until the first specialized journals were launched in the mid‐1930s. The aim of this paper is to better understand the marketing discipline during this crucial formative period, especially the structure, presentation, and content of marketing knowledge.

The primary sources are The American Marketing Journal and the National Marketing Review, the two predecessor journals that combined to form Journal of Marketing in 1936. They are examined for publishing data and content areas, article format and authorship, and the topics and methods constituting marketing knowledge.

The scholarship published in the first marketing journals was written by single authors who only infrequently cited other works. A wide range of topics were explored with much attention given to issues of marketing and society. Marketing writers considered their field a science and showed confidence in it despite dire environmental conditions.

The primary sources examined have been all but forgotten and deserve to be revisited. The research investigates not only the texts themselves, but the people who wrote them, their professional biographies and associational activities, and the larger academic and social environments of their time.

The purpose of this paper is to explore introspection in marketing research, its controversial origins, its positioning as an art form, the possibilities and the pitfalls of research based on this method, and how to successfully enter into its creative spirit.

Although its overall approach is broadly conceptual, in a similar fashion to the dramatic device of a‐play‐within‐a‐play, the paper makes a habit of using introspection to reflect on introspection.

While it is clear that well‐written introspections can deliver rich stream‐of‐consciousness accounts of marketing‐relevant goodness from beginning to end, they provide more than just frivolous entertainment. The innermost imperative of introspection equates well with consumption, creativity and aestheticisation, the corner‐stones of arts marketing.

The inherent mucky‐mindedness of introspection as a formal method lays its success or failure on the shoulders of the paper's author.

Whatever their interpretive methodology of choice, arts marketers, indeed all marketers, should give serious thought to integrating introspection into their research approach.

While many of the ideas in the paper are pilfered from other sources (see long list of references), the author is proud to assert that precisely these words have never been written in precisely this order.

The purpose of this paper is to present a biographical sketch of David D. Monieson whose academic career in marketing included time spent at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Toronto, and over 30 years at Queen's University. It is focussed on Monieson's contributions to the history and philosophy of marketing thought, especially with respect to what Monieson called “usable knowledge” in marketing.

This paper uses a traditional historical narrative based on extensive personal interviews with Monieson and with some of his students and colleagues as well as archival research including personal correspondence, course notes, research notes, and other unpublished documents.

Monieson made important contributions to the thinking about history and philosophy of marketing thought. Some of his ideas, such as the intellectualization and re‐enchantment of marketing, have found a following among marketing academics; others, such as complexity, have not.

There is no published biographical study of Monieson and no detailed analysis of his contributions to marketing thought. This biographical sketch provides insights into several significant marketing ideas and tells the life story of an important marketing scholar.

Narrative accounts of subjective consumer experience are, in one form or another, a staple of qualitative market research. They have an obvious connection with the literary form of creative non‐fiction (CNF), yet this connection has rarely been explored. Based on the assumption that writing craft is a neglected yet fundamental part of qualitative research practice, this paper seeks to contribute a new, literary‐based perspective to the interpretive turn in qualitative market research.

The paper draws on a range of extant literature to draw out the distinguishing features of CNF, placing these in juxtaposition to biographical and narrative auto‐ethnographic consumer research. The overall aim is to begin to detail the particular qualities of writing that might contribute to better qualitative research. To assist in this quest the attempts at scholarly discussion in the paper are interpolated with a series of digressive interludes written in an auto‐biographical CNF style. These interludes are intended to exemplify aspects of the interpretive research mentality.

This is a conceptual paper seeking to draw attention to and develop a relatively neglected research agenda. The concluding reflections suggest some tangible consequences of this research. The paper suggests that a stronger focus on research writing craft through CNF can liberate the imagination of research respondents and enrich the analysis of narrative forms of qualitative data.

This paper addresses the vast area of narrative‐based qualitative research from a perspective which will be entirely new to many researchers and practitioners. It suggests tangible benefits that this new perspective could bring to the work of each.

This paper aims to provide a history of a number of intellectual debates in marketing theory and consumer research. It outlines the key arguments involved, highlights the politics and acrimoniousness that often accompanied the competition for academic prestige or practitioner remuneration. It weaves the contents of the special issue into its narrative.

This article engages in a broad historical survey of the history of marketing thought, as it pertains to intellectual debate and disputation.

While scholars often articulate objectivity as an intellectual ideal, many of the debates that are explored reveal a degree of intellectual intolerance and this is refracted through the institutional system that structures marketing discourse.

This account provides an introduction to the intellectual debates of the last century, highlighting the ebb and flow of marketing thought. It calls attention to debates that are largely under explored and highlights the politics of knowledge production in marketing and consumer research.