Marketing 2
Marketing 2
Marketing 2
A marketing paradox
Mark E. Hill John McGinnis Jane Cromartie
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Mark E. Hill John McGinnis Jane Cromartie, (2007),"A marketing paradox", Marketing Intelligence &
Planning, Vol. 25 Iss 7 pp. 652 - 661
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MIP VIEWPOINT
25,7
A marketing paradox
Mark E. Hill and John McGinnis
652 Department of Marketing, Montclair State University, Upper Montclair,
New Jersey, USA, and
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Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explain and discuss a paradoxical tension in the practice of
marketing and the consequent dilemmas posed for practitioners in general and planners in particular.
Design/methodology/approach A Viewpoint contribution, with implicit permission to think
aloud. Informed opinion and logical argument are in this case founded on but not exclusively derived
from the existing research-based marketing literature, plus selected transfer of principles from other
disciplines.
Findings The paradox is that, by concentrating on the contribution of accepted theory and
principles to practice, in fact intellectual and conceptual progress might be hindered. A way out of this
dilemma is to shift the focus from marketing-as-content (doing) to marketing-as-questioning
(thinking). A new working definition emphasizes the value of this focus and the benefits of equal
participation in the process by both academics and practitioners.
Practical implications A route map is offered for productive collaboration across the
much-discussed academic-practitioner gap, which should lead to mitigation of the constraining
(hindering) effect of the conventional wisdom and the way it is applied to strategy.
Originality/value The paper presents a point of view, to stimulate lateral thinking and alternative
positions. It shifts the focus from what to how and why and exhorts academics and practitioners
to move in the same direction together.
Keywords Marketing, Marketing decision making, Marketing philosophy, Marketing management,
Thinking
Paper type Viewpoint
Adulthood
As concerning as the antiquity of the core concepts is the question of their relevance to
contemporary practitioners. Wilkie and Moore (2003, p. 132) remark on the takeover of
marketings body of thought by the academic community . . . the virtual disappearance
of practitioner representation in the leading journals. Svensson and Wood (2007)
found none at all on the editorial boards or reviewing panels of three leading marketing
journals in the USA, the UK and New Zealand, over the period 2000-2006. An entire
MIP Special Issue of Marketing Intelligence & Planning was devoted to this potentially
25,7 damaging academic-practitioner divide (Brennan, 2004) and another in the Journal of
Marketing Management (UK), will focus on bridging the theory/practice divide
(Dibb and Simkin, 2008). The worrying implication is that academics deal in theory
and neglect practice, while practitioners follow the conventional professional wisdom
and mistrust theorizing.
654 In fact, many leading marketing scholars have issued calls for some change in our
understanding of what marketing is, and whom it is best suited to serve. Fully 16 years
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ago, Day (1992, p. 324) expressed his concern that, Within academic circles, the
contribution of marketing, as an applied management discipline, to the development,
testing, and dissemination of strategy theories has been marginalized during the past
decade. More recently, at a symposium convened to discuss the question Does
Marketing Need Reform?, topics addressed by respected participants included: the
reputation of marketing, or the lack thereof, among consumers and professionals
(Sisodia, 2004); how to bring about necessary reform (Sheth, 2004); the need to
challenge our mental models (Wind, 2004); the negative consequences of disciplinary
fragmentation (Wilkie, 2004); a change of focus from exchange to change (Lusch, 2004);
and the diminishing influence of marketing as a discipline (Varadarajan, 2004).
It seems odd that the very business discipline whose literature directs students and
practitioners alike to adopt the outside-in marketing concept in its strategic planning
should have become increasingly marginalized in practice by failing to respond to the
needs of its own markets.
Mid-life crisis
In 2004, the American Marketing Association (AMA) unveiled a new definition of
marketing at its Summer Educators Conference, following predecessors formulated in
1948, 1968 (unchanged) and 1985:
Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating
and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that
benefit the organization and its stakeholders.
The AMAs Journal of Public Policy & Marketing later issued a Call for papers
(American Marketing Association, 2006, 2007) that would examine the implications of
the new definition for the academic disciplines of marketing and society . . .
scholarship . . . education . . . future development . . . the relationship and impact of
these disciplines on other fields.
Both, the new definition and the Call for Papers are discipline-focused, setting the
boundaries of marketing as an organizational function and an added-value
management process. Marketing is defined by its own professionals association as a
thing, in turn consisting of subsets of other things. The implicit assumption is that
principles and practice are best understood and evaluated through internal analysis of
existing knowledge and by those who have produced it. Rather than alleviating the
problems that have resulted from marketings past disciplinary focus, these efforts to
move forward perpetuate them.
If marketing maintains its inward focus on the existing body of knowledge, it risks
further marginalization in its application. The decades-old classic, Marketing myopia
(Levitt, 1960) cautioned managers against the risk implicit in narrowly focusing their
attention on products made, rather than the needs fulfilled by those products that, A marketing
ultimately, the value and success of the provider can be made only by the actual and paradox
potential users, not by its own cost accountants. Likewise, we need to beware of
myopia about marketing. The very essence of its status as a distinct business
discipline has been its managerial focus on markets as the source of the information
and insight necessary for effective decision making, on continuously striving to
understand change in the market place, to be ready to offer new responses to new 655
situations. It is difficult to see how a new definition of marketing that continues to
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emphasise the what enshrined in the received wisdom could encourage marketing
academics to address the why and how questions to which marketing practitioners
need answers if they are to respond creatively to the evolving markets of the future.
The grown-up marketing discipline finds itself in an interesting situation with
respect to strategic planning and operational control. On the one hand, it has built a
framework for strategic action on such foundations as segmentation and positioning,
and on a willingness to let outside forces shape internal planning. On the other, it has
treated that framework almost as a body of laws. We argue that its very commitment
to the continuous validation of the existing body of knowledge may in fact be
misdirecting the academic community. Marketing theorists would do well to read the
introduction to the seminal text on grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), in
which two young sociological researchers explain how they rebelled against a
convention that their sole role was to validate and perhaps refine the grand theory
promulgated by the founding fathers of the discipline. But where had that which they
were to work with sprung from? Exactly. We refer to the marketing manifestation of
this inertia in the system as the contributing , hindering paradox, henceforth
referred to as, simply, the C , H paradox.
thinking closes (Hill et al., 2007). The normative practices of researchers, teachers and
practitioners reinforce this closed loop of cause and effect.
The challenge for marketing scholars is not to the paradox and its resulting
dilemma, but rather to recognise and understand it, so as to be able to develop
strategies or means to work around its consequences. To seek a solution would be to
deny the paradox. Recognizing its inevitable existence, on the other hand, presents an
opportunity to re-think marketing. This might perhaps entail moving for
marketing-as-content toward marketing-as-questioning (Hill et al., 2007). By
improving our understanding of the , Hindering elements of the C , H paradox,
we become aware of the value of marketing thinking and its questioning advance,
among academics and practitioners in concert, as the impetus for a challenge to the
authoritarian power of current theories, concepts, models, and planning frameworks.
Recalling the studies by Wilkie and Moore (2003) and Svensson and Wood (2007), it is
vital to the success and relevance of this new paradigm that the practitioners
voice be heard in the marketing literature.
It is the dynamic tension inherent in the C , H paradox that will motivate the
questioning of current marketing thinking. This tension can never be fully resolved; it
is a continuous means to an end. Accordingly, we must now turn our attention towards
the re-defining of marketing in such a way as to address this state of affairs.
of the process. When the curiosity evaporates and the questioning stops, we asserted,
so does the thinking.
What distinguishes this view of marketing is that emphasis is shifted from what
is to what may be, toward the appropriation of appropriate available information
and intelligence, and its extension to the particular purposes at hand. The value of
current knowledge is not as an end in itself, but as a means. The advance is the
opportunity for new syntheses to be developed in real time. In other words, the body of
marketing knowledge is useful only to the extent that it is used to develop new
understanding. Its value resides only in its use as the fuel for the combustion of
productive questioning advance of marketing. From this perspective, the focus of
marketing should be on the way its knowledge is being used to move beyond itself,
which involves the questioning advance of marketing. The next question, then, is: how
can we participate in the process?
A route map
In moving forward, we will not necessarily be making progress in the modernist sense,
toward a universal, general theory of marketing. If that were the goal, questioning and
thinking could eventually cease, but they must not. Their necessary role in the
advancement of knowledge in the physical sciences is powerfully summed up by
Loevinger (1995):
Scientists have long assumed that humanity will overcome its ignorance of the universe
through accumulating knowledge. However, they have also become aware that the more
knowledge is acquired, more is left unexplained or unknown. Thus, advances in the fields of
biology, astronomy, quantum physics and medicine seem to uncover more areas for study.
A more appropriate attitude would be to regard science as a search for answers to problems,
which would continuously generate new problems.
Why should that not apply equally to our own applied social science?
The direction of any questioning is not always forward; we can return to previous
questioning, detour along the way, and spring off in new directions all together.
Forward is not the only way to discovery, and backward is not necessarily a retreat.
This flexibility is one of the appealing characteristics of marketing. There is always
something new and different to be understood, another way to understand, and hence
to compete. The corollary that the goal is never fully realized is a value in itself; the
process is dynamic.
One way to initiate the process is to stand back, and view the familiar from a
different vantage point, from which new and different paths or avenues may branch
out. Questioning is directional, affecting what is seen and considered, and in turn
affecting our understanding of situations. There is strategic value in recognizing it as a
MIP resource for developing new directions for market analysis, marketing intelligence,
25,7 and marketing planning.
Another useful approach would be to begin with practitioners. How do they picture
the necessary thinking and questioning, from their performance-led perspective? What
about questioning by consumers (the questions they ask in navigating the
marketplace), rather than of them (the questions asked by market researchers)?
658 What kinds of thinking are affecting the social responsibility of the practice of
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marketing today? Is the questioning shifting direction, to set the stage for tomorrow?
How are todays questions affecting public policy with respect to marketing? How does
global thinking affect local questioning, and vice versa? How are technological changes
affecting what we ask? Academics have much to learn from marketing planners about
sophisticated developments on their side of the academic-practitioner divide. For
example, marketing consultancies and advertising agencies have begun to track on the
internet every global cultural phenomenon that looks to be new and next. This
cool-hunting was concisely defined and explained by one such consultant in a Special
Issue of Marketing Intelligence & Planning (Southgate, 2003).
Another key feature of questioning is that it has a centring role in establishing the
footings. As Gelven (2000, p. 3) put it:
We begin in the middle because we are in the middle; we are askers far more profoundly than
we are knowers or sceptics. Knowledge and ignorance, however, do not, when combined,
somehow tell us about asking; it is the other way around: only as askers can we make sense of
knowledge or ignorance.
To put it another way, we must ask the necessary questions of the prevailing
knowledge, despite its the privileged position in the discipline. In so doing, our
emphasis will shift from observation and verification (a Utopian goal) to participation
in the creation of applicable knowledge.
To facilitate that ambition, we need to understand the forces that could potentially
thwart it. Those obstacles to marketing thinking are the subject of our previous
paper in Marketing Intelligence & Planning (Hill et al., 2007). Apart from sheer inertia
and the power of the status quo, as in many other disciplines, we argued that the key
obstacles are familiarity with the accepted principles, a static orientation, and the
existence of implicit norms. Other observers might include forced choice from within
limited sets of alternatives, constraints imposed by the nature of the questions asked,
and starting from the wrong standpoint.
Practitioners would certainly add time-poverty to the list. Southgate (2006)
identifies this as one of two reasons for not reading the academic marketing journals,
and not forging links with the business school community (the other is the comparative
inaccessibility of journals and the all-too-ready accessibility of popularizing
textbooks). He says:
Time is nearly always scarce. Even when it is not, the belief that it is scarce is almost
universal amongst practitioners . . . [those] who look to academic sources are taking a gamble
with their scarcest resource: time.
The inescapable conclusion is that the impetus to bridge the academic-practitioner
divide is more likely to be provided by the more pragmatic kind of business-school
academic than by time-pressured practitioners themselves.
What next? A marketing
Are there certain attitudes, behaviours, and activities that those practising or teaching paradox
marketing can embrace, to enhance marketing practice? We say yes.
Raising consciousness
Theories, concepts, models, and planning frameworks must be recognized for what
they truly are: the products of marketing thought, not marketing thinking. They are 659
the starting points for marketing thinking, and invaluable as such, but are neither
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solutions nor ends. The new streams of marketing thought that questioning can extract
from them not only facilitate real progress in the discipline, but also accommodate the
C , H paradox/dilemma.
Increasing inclusiveness
The thought processes that a marketing academic follows in pursuit of the answer to a
hypothetical strategic problem is neither necessarily any better nor any worse than
those followed by a marketing practitioner faced by a practical problem. Indeed, it is
intuitively logical that multiple starting points will enhance the quality of the solution,
because more paths are explored and more time is allocated to constructive thinking.
Thus, the view of marketing advocated here can increase the inclusiveness of the
discipline. Closing of the academic-practitioner communication gap, via professional
associations, journals and professional seminars, should be a key priority for anyone
with a stake in the future of our discipline.
Perhaps, astute marketers already grasp all this, instinctively. Let us hope so. And
may those colleagues proselytise effectively to others who have not yet strayed from
the status quo.
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25,7
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660 Hill, M.E., McGinnis, J. and Cromartie, J. (2007), Point of view: the obstacles to marketing
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Corresponding author
Mark E. Hill can be contacted at: [email protected]; [email protected]