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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether or not marketing academics practise what they preach. Are they marketing‐oriented in their main business of knowledge creation and dissemination?

The epistemological marketing literature and performance at producing true marketing knowledge are critically reviewed. Practitioner marketing knowledge is investigated through the literature, personal contacts and a simple direct research study.

The paper finds that only one kind of knowledge, so‐called “marketing science”, is now regarded as valid. Unfortunately, this kind of knowledge can only be built through extensive and independent testing. After 50 years of following this approach, the output is very small, very expensive and largely of no interest to practitioners because marketing knowledge means something quite different to them. Marketing academics have become myopic as to what marketing knowledge is, and they have become production‐oriented, with the objective of producing as much of it as possible.

There is a need to stop trying to tell practitioners what to do and to shift one's research emphasis to conceptual humanism, postmodern science, direct and action research, tools for practitioners, marketing facts, and educating the whole student.

The paper has made an attempt to change the course of marketing academic literature.

Based on both quantitative and qualitative analyses, this study revisits public relations (PR) and marketing practitioners' perceptions of PR function and its relationship with marketing function in the digital context.

An online survey targeting 234 PR and marketing practitioners was first conducted, followed by a total of 27 in-depth interviews with PR and marketing practitioners.

Results from the two phases of analysis show that both PR and marketing practitioners perceive market functions as sales-oriented, whereas media relations is interpreted as more of a PR function. Content marketing and influencer marketing via digital communication channels help to enhance the convergence of PR and marketing functions. PR and marketing practitioners believe that PR and marketing functions are integrative, and they are willing to work flexibly for both functions within workplaces.

This study presents a continuum of PR and marketing functions in the digital era that illustrates the role of digital communication in the convergence of PR and marketing functions. The results help to advance the theoretical discussion on both the functional (excellent PR practices and relationship management) and critical (the social role of PR in the participatory culture) approaches of PR in the digital context. Managerial implications are also discussed in addition to the theoretical contributions.

The purpose of the research is first, to understand, explain, and evaluate the nature and extent of marketing skill development in MBA programmes relative to the needs and desires of practitioners and students, and second, to present findings and recommendations for increasing the effectiveness of skill development in MBA programmes for the benefit of both marketing practitioners and academics.

The research design/methodology is based primarily on survey research on skill development in MBA programmes from the perspectives of both graduates and marketing practitioners.

This research suggests that six important skill weaknesses – decision making, leadership, problem formulation, persuasion, creativity, and negotiation – need to be developed among future marketers and that a marketing education framework should be based on the pillars of a project and dissertation, classroom debate and discussion, and oral presentations.

Future research should focus on understanding and explaining to an even greater extent how marketing education can make more effective use of interactive, hands‐on learning approaches typified by a project and dissertation, classroom debates and discussions, and oral presentations.

Implications for practice include the suggestion that practitioners must also assume responsibility for developing initiatives that facilitate marketing skill development as well.

The new and original value and contribution of the research is that it extensively characterises and quantifies the extent of a marketing skill development gap – the gap between what marketing skills are being developed in MBA programmes and what practitioners want and need in marketers of the future in addition to providing recommendations to close the marketing skills gap.

The purpose of this study is threefold. The first is to discuss the practice of corporate hospitality (CH) at special events used by Australian businesses as a relationship marketing technique to engage with their customers. The second aim is to investigate how marketing practitioners judge their CH programmes in a business-to-business (B2B) context. A third aim is to determine the key benefits and uncover contemporary issues faced by marketing practitioners in the operation of CH programmes.

A qualitative method was employed in this the first phase of a broader research programme. The research design sought to attain exploratory insights from marketing executives that employed CH at sports and cultural events as part of existing B2B marketing programmes. The intention of this qualitative study was to investigate and uncover key issues and establish themes that could be tested in future research. Fifteen in depth interviews including a pilot of two interviews were conducted with marketing practitioners who held managerial responsibility for CH programmes in four states of Australia. These interviews were electronically recorded and subsequently transcribed for coding purposes.

An analysis identified several key issues regarding the role and deployment of CH within marketing programmes. Key benefits of programmes included gaining market intelligence, improving channel communication and creating a competitive advantage through building existing relationships with a firm's customers. The research found that there were specific differences within both the application and management of CH among practitioners and highlighted several pressing issues regarding the practice. Events offering mass appeal to both genders such as tennis and horse racing were considered more appealing to a corporate audience and spectacular, big-ticket events were favoured. The research identified that no two organisations operate their programmes identically, some use the programmes to reward past loyalty and others leverage special events for face-to-face time with new clients. The lack of consistency in measurement included an inability to disengage CH programmes from other marketing elements operating simultaneously. It was evident that the lack of objective setting by many organisations coupled with often a short-term view of CH programmes impeded effective measurement of expected outcomes.

This exploratory study provides greater insights into the little researched topic of CH in the special events sector. Implications stemming from the study include the implementation of recommended changes to CH design and delivery including optimising special event selection to match intended guests and their preferences, setting micro and macro objectives for CH programmes and ensuring they are measurable. In addition, such objectives need to be made explicit to internal stakeholders in order to maximise return on investment for marketing practitioners. For CH to continue to grow as a major revenue stream for special event organisers, more certainty with regards to the outcomes of these programmes are required, along with ensuring the CH special event products offer corporate appeal.

The purpose of this paper is to explain that theories provide an important tool for practitioners in guiding decisions by explaining and predicting consumer decision making when new specific research data might be unavailable. This is true despite the problems caused by some academic journal articles’ use and abuse of theory development. The argument for this crucial role of theory in marketing practice explains reasons why many practitioners dislike academic research and related theory development, as well as points out where practitioners’ criticisms are valid.

Delineation of problems in journal articles and some research notes the overall value of work for marketing practice and (indirectly) points out the important value of practitioner-focused research publications.

While marketing practitioners are wrong to condemn all theory development as useless, too often in too many ways, researchers and journals deserve it. Yet, despite the problems, marketing practice needs marketing theory.

This paper points out an ongoing common myopia of marketing practice, whereby practitioners miss out on the value of theory development.

The purpose of this study is to examine the link between research and practice within the context of Islamic marketing (IM), an issue which is controversial in the literature. It offers reasonable answers that bridge the gap between research and practice, as well as the way to mitigate it.

This study uses a critical approach to analytically review the literature on IM, and relates it to research and practice.

The study finds that the advancement of knowledge on IM necessitates research and practice. There is a gap between research and practice which evolved from decades of objectivity between researchers and practitioners in the field of IM. It is necessary to search for some practicable solutions that can narrow the gap between theory and practice.

The basic limitation of this study is that IM has not yet emerged as a distinct discipline. Hence, there is limited study on IM issues in the context of research and practice.

This study makes essential contributions to the chastisement by research and practice, a theoretically new field of IM subject.

The use of nostalgia in the marketing domain has been popular around the world. Nostalgia has been considered a complex yet ambivalent emotion, which has ignited curiosity among marketing researchers and practitioners alike. In response to calls from marketing practitioners and scholars to understand nostalgia formation among consumers, this study tracks the evolution of nostalgia concepts in the domains of marketing and, more generally, business management. This study aims to highlight the development of a theoretical framework to integrate existing concepts and offer implications based on understanding nostalgia as a phenomenon among consumers as a tool for marketing practice.

This study is descriptive and inductive in nature. The manuscript is designed and positioned as a conceptual study exploring nostalgia’s journey from the domain of psychology to business management. The study synthesizes concepts of nostalgia from psychology, sociology and business management.

The study reveals that nostalgia in the business-management domain is not perceived in the same way as in psychology studies. It has journeyed through different schools of thought and is now used as an impactful marketing practice. The manuscript offers relevant information to marketing practitioners to improve their nostalgia marketing strategies, such as advertising and promotions, retro-branding, crowd-sourcing and culturally oriented practice. Subsequently, the manuscript offers pointers for understanding consumers across the generations and exploring nostalgia and consumption patterns for future research.

The manuscript offers relevant information about nostalgia to marketing practitioners to improve their nostalgia marketing strategies and proposes avenues for future research to the domain scholars.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no comprehensive paper tracking the journey of nostalgia in business practices and providing directions for future research. This study extends existing literature both by suggesting future research directions and by drawing marketing practitioners’ attention to a conceptual framework for understanding the processes of and relationships with consumer nostalgia, including ways to use consumer nostalgia within marketing practices.

The paper reports on research sponsored by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as part of its Canon of Knowledge initiative. The paper addresses the issue of what areas currently being taught as part of the discipline of marketing are considered important by business‐to‐business marketing practitioners. It also examines how these differ between the private and public sectors and identifies the tools and techniques felt to be most useful to practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the tension in brand management created through the rapid transformation of social media, mapping the maintenance of increasingly complex B2B relationship dynamics with key intermediaries.

In-depth interviews with 17 social media practitioners from leading fashion brands, agencies and platforms in the UK and Australia informed this study. Analysis used grounded theory, and results were interpreted through the lens of network and stakeholder theories.

Social media platforms have evolved into critical brand stakeholders, serving as gatekeepers in an increasingly unbalanced system between provider and marketer. The perpetuation of a hierarchical power dynamic affects the development of both practitioner and firm capabilities with negative implications and consequences for organisational control of branded social media communications. Three theoretical propositions are offered relating to the nature of platform hegemony, the notion of social media democratisation and the limiting impact of rapid change on the formation of relational ties.

This study extends the conceptualisation of communal custody of brands in social media settings to incorporate a growing number of commercial stakeholders, challenging the traditional dyadic consumer-brand relational paradigm. This study sheds new light on the impact of digital transformation on power distributions in social media communities not hitherto addressed.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the tensions that marketing practitioners in social enterprises experience, and to explore how these tensions impact the development and implementation of marketing activities.

Using an approach informed by grounded theory, this paper reports on an investigation of the tensions facing 15 social enterprises. The primary data comprises semi-structured interviews with senior marketing decision-makers, supplemented with archival sources.

The analysis shows tensions and dualities inform the social and commercial strategic marketing activities of the social enterprises. These tensions and dualities are linked to how the organization obtains financial resources, the nature of the organization’s growth, working with myriad stakeholders and competitive versus cooperative pressures. A model outlining the dualities and their links to marketing activities is developed.

The study provides an in-depth analysis of a small, regional sample of Canadian social enterprises. The study serves as a foundation for future research aimed at elaborating the model we propose.

The findings point to tensions and dualities that play an important role in enabling and restricting the development and implementation of strategic marketing activities in social enterprises. Understanding the nature of these dualities is crucial for social enterprise managers and social marketers as they develop strategic activities.

Social enterprises engage in activities that offer substantial social benefits, yet the development of marketing activities in these organizations requires confronting tensions that must be carefully managed.

This paper highlights how dualities facing marketing practitioners in social enterprises influence the development of both social and for-profit marketing activities. The paper offers a model of these dualities. The findings help to extend our understanding of the complex environmental influences impacting marketing practices within social enterprise organizations. Understanding the nature of these environmental influences helps to attune marketers to the potential opportunities and challenges of using social enterprise as an organizational form for launching social marketing programs, as well as providing a theoretical basis for future investigations of marketing practice in social enterprise and social marketing organizations.