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The purpose of this study is to examine the potential of integrating material from the arts into postgraduate curricula to deepen students’ engagement with marketing phenomena. The authors assess the use of arts-based activities, within a broader critical pedagogy, for encouraging imaginative and analytical thinking.

The authors devised two learning activities and an interpretive method for studying their value. The activities were an individual essay connecting themes in song lyrics to marketing, and a group photography project. These were applied, within a broader, critical approach, in postgraduate modules on sustainability, ethics and critical marketing. Data collection comprised diaries kept by the teachers, open-ended feedback from students and students’ assignments.

Students showed high levels of engagement, reflexivity and depth of thought, in felt experiences of learning. Their ability to make connections not explicitly in the materials, and requiring imaginative jumps, was notable. Several reported lasting changes to their behaviour. Some found the tasks initially intimidating or, once they were more engaged, stressful or saddening.

This adds to scholarship on management education by showing the usefulness of an arts-based approach towards a transformative agenda.

It offers a template of how to draw from the arts to strengthen critical engagement upon which marketing teachers can build. It also contains practical advice on the challenges and benefits of doing so.

The authors provide evidence that this approach can enhance sensitivity and reflexivity in students, potentially producing more ethical and sustainable decisions in future.

The pedagogical interventions are novel and of value to lecturers seeking to enhance critical engagement with theory. An empirical study of an attempt to integrate arts into teaching marketing represents a promising direction, given the discipline’s creative nature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature and role of the critical dimension social marketing and its place within marketing scholarly thought. It is posited that such activity can be defined as “critical social marketing” and a formal definition is offered.

The ability of critical social marketing to inform the research and evidence base, as well as upstream and downstream activity is discussed. Scholarly debate on the role of critical social marketing within the social marketing and critical marketing paradigms, both of which heavily inform the concept, are reviewed. The application of a critical social marketing framework to the study of the impact of tobacco and food marketing is examined.

The paper demonstrates the utility of a critical social marketing framework in real‐world environments. Important considerations on who critical social marketers are and where the concept is located within marketing thought are addressed. The paper concludes by arguing that critical social marketing is a valid and established sub‐set of marketing thought within its own right, and should henceforth be regarded as such.

Offering a definition of critical social marketing formalises its position within marketing thought. Discussing the tensions surrounding the critical dimension of social marketing within the social marketing and critical marketing paradigms demonstrates the difficulty in locating concepts within existing literature. A review of the application of critical social marketing demonstrates its validity. Positing that critical social marketing should be located as a sub‐set within social marketing contributes to the marketing discipline and the organisation of marketing ideas and concepts.

“Theory versus practice” and “rigour versus relevance” debates have long been a feature of the discipline of marketing, not least within the sub‐field of marketing education, where authors have increasingly called for the adoption of more critical approaches as a means to enhance undergraduate degrees. To date, however, little is actually known about how undergraduate programmes are perceived by those who deliver them. The aim of this research is to investigate educators' views of the primary purpose of undergraduate degrees, and their perceptions and experiences of critical approaches.

A series of 23 exploratory interviews was conducted, followed by a national survey of UK marketing educators. For the main phase of data analysis, multivariate techniques were employed.

Respondents generally agreed that intellectual rigour is a priority in marketing education. However, significant differences in opinion were identified on the extent to which degrees actually provide this, the extent to which students should be treated as customers, and whether curricula should be driven by industry. In terms of critical approaches, the majority of staff rated such approaches as important to undergraduate programmes, and most had introduced at least one type in their own teaching. There were no significant differences in ratings and experiences of critical approaches between those respondents who emphasised industry relevance in marketing education and the rest.

The divergence of views revealed by the research raises important questions about how marketing is currently positioned to different stakeholders, and how the discipline may evolve in future.

The role of the university as a site of social, cultural and political critique appears to be in terminal decline with the inexorable “commodification” of the university in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. Yet, although scholars have identified the dangers of such a scenario, few attempts have been made to offer a pragmatic solution to preserve, or even rejuvenate, the university as an agent of critique. This paper proposes that a critical marketing education can take over this role in the academy where traditional critical agents like the arts and humanities are widely acknowledged to have failed.

The paper uses a historical‐critical approach, and conceives of “critique” as a heterogeneous, multidimensional amalgam of both business and the humanities.

The paper shows how a critical marketing education offers a pragmatic means of preparing university students to become active and critical voices of society.

Few attempts have been made to offer a pragmatic solution to preserve, or even rejuvenate, the university as an agent of critique. This paper proposes that a critical marketing education can take over this role in the academy.

There has been considerable recent discussion about the relevance of critical theory to management discourse and its implications for the education of managers. Within this debate, marketing, and by implication, marketing academics, have been extensively criticised by those outside the discipline for failing to embrace more critical theoretical approaches in their work. Unfavourable parallels have been made with management accounting which has a similar academic/practitioner profile but where critical theory was embraced over two decades ago. The objectives of this paper are threefold: to attempt to account for the lack of critical theory in the discipline; to provide a critical evaluation of the usefulness of critical theory in marketing discourse; and to assess some of the practical implications associated with the implementation of critical theoretical approaches in teaching, research and publishing.

Critical marketing studies are currently on the margins of the discipline, and the ideas and challenges to conventional marketing thought posed by these critiques are rarely examined in the marketing classroom. Drawing largely from debates in the management literature, discusses the problems and considers the possibilities of integrating critical reflection into the marketing curriculum.

This paper calls attention to the importance of historical research within “critical marketing studies”. It seeks to articulate a historical perspective based on the work of Michel Foucault.

This paper is based on a close reading of relevant Foucaultian primary and secondary texts.

Foucault's scholarship provides a useful counterpoint to the calls for critical theory to form the central paradigm in critical marketing studies, revealing a complex constellation of power/knowledge relations underpinning marketing theory, thought and pedagogy.

This is a close reading and examination of a theoretically sophisticated, rigorous scholar who remains largely underexplored in relation to marketing theory and the history of marketing thought.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed concern regarding alcohol consumption and related harms in developing nations. Concomitantly a growing evidence base suggests that alcohol marketing influences drinking behaviours. The purpose of this paper is to explore how critical social marketing can help assess the nature of alcohol marketing, and the effectiveness of its regulation, in developing countries.

A sample of 14 alcohol marketing campaigns from India, Malawi, Malaysia, Nigeria, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Thailand are assessed against the regulatory codes governing alcohol marketing in the UK.

The study found that alcohol marketing often contravened the UK regulatory codes. Critical social marketing offers a framework for research and analysis to assess the nature and impact of alcohol marketing, and to address alcohol related harms in developing countries.

This exploratory study is limited to a small convenience sample. Future research to systematically audit alcohol marketing, and consumer studies to assess its impact on drinking behaviours in developing nations would be welcomed.

Findings suggest that initiatives to monitor and effectively regulate alcohol marketing in developing nations should be explored by policymakers. The competitive analysis and insight generated by studies of this nature can aid development agencies in the design and implementation of alcohol social marketing interventions. The global alcohol industry and marketers should also be encouraged to act more socially responsible.

The paper offers insights into how the critical social marketing framework can be applied in practice, to inform social marketing activity in the upstream and downstream environment.

This paper aims to understand what reflexivity means and explores which types of reflexivity could be applied within social marketing practice as a critical approach to overcoming failures.

This paper is a critical literature review.

The study proposes a typology for a reflexive approach to social marketing practice to overcome failures. The typology is built on self and critical reflexivity, simultaneously allowing social marketers to reflect on external and internal factors that may affect the individual's role and could negatively affect social marketing practice unless otherwise considered. The types of reflexivity discussed are not prescriptive; instead, the authors intend to provoke further discussion on an under-researched but vital area of social marketing.

The proposed typology is conceptual; an empirical investigation to gain social marketer's views would further enhance the effectiveness of the applications of the typology.

Social marketers could use the proposed typology for future practice.

This is the first study that conceptualises various types of reflexivity within social marketing practice to overcome failures.

To show how the conceptual framework of the marketing discipline can be radically revised and rethought, to be better in tune with the realities of the producer‐consumer relationship in advanced societies in the twenty‐first century.

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

Marketing thinkers need to broaden their horizons, look at the marketing phenomenon as consumers experience it, and be prepared to learn from research conducted far beyond the confines of conventional marketing theory. Specifically, the present‐day context of marketing demands increased attention to the relatively familiar concept of relationship marketing and the so far relatively unknown perspective called “critical marketing”.

There is much integrative work to be done in effectively integrating the wide range of theoretical inputs required to explain what “marketing” means today.

Though the rethinking advocated may be challenging for marketing practitioners, the readings cited provide means for marketing educators to build the conceptual frameworks into applicable research and useful learning.

A glimpse of the future.