ABSTRACT
Marketing academics, like early theologians such as St Thomas Aquinas and St Augustine, are using false premises on which to build their theories. Just as these early Christian scholars did not question core beliefs such as the existence of God, Adam’s (man’s) superiority to Eve (woman), and Eve’s blame for man’s fall from grace so, too, marketing scholars and practitioners do not question that which they hold as sacred, nor challenge the patriarchal worldview upon which marketing knowledge is based. Phallocentrism with its misplaced ‘sacred’ ideals has led to an imperfect discipline; a discipline which through its ‘profanities’ is increasingly alienating marketing’s followers. To illustrate, we will examine one of marketing’s core tools-marketing) research-and find it prejudiced at best and seriously flawed at worst. We will go on to propose that a feminist perspective is necessary to redress the balance and that marketing) researchers need to shed their androcentrism, complacency and comfortable assumptions about research practice and rethink their relationship with the subjects of their research. Only then can marketing progress as a discipline.
