ABSTRACT

I grant that scientists often fall in love with their own constructions. I know; I have. They may spend a lifetime vainly to shore them up. A few squander their prestige and academic capital in the effort. In that case-as economist Paul Samuelson once quipped-funeral by funeral, theory advances. (Wilson 1998, p. 52)

It’s reasonable to presume that the impetus for either a marketing scholar or a community of marketing scholars to pose the question, does marketing need reform? could conceivably be discontent with the current state of, for example:

• marketing practice • applied research in marketing • laws and regulations governing the practice of marketing • scholarly research in marketing • marketing education at institutions for higher education

In this chapter, I address the question of the need for reform in marketing in the following contexts. Concerns voiced by marketing academicians regarding the:

• Diminishing influence of the marketing discipline (and marketing scholars) in the academic discourse on strategy

• Diminishing influence of the marketing function (and marketing managers) in organizations • Specter of deficiencies in scholarly research in marketing or marketing education lead-

ing to the marginalization of the marketing function (and marketing managers) in organizations

ALLEGED LOSS OF INFLUENCE OF MARKETING IN ACADEMIC DISCOURSE ON STRATEGY: ACRIMONY IN THE IVORY TOWER REVISITED

Reminiscing about marketing’s loss of influence in the academic discourse on strategy, Day (1992, p. 324) noted: “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.” Among the reasons for the loss of influence, according to Day, are the following:

• Preemption of marketing frameworks, concepts and methods by other fields of inquiry. • Tendency to employ theories and frameworks of other academic disciplines, and the atten-

dant lop-sided balance of trade in influential ideas. • Ceding of territory by shifting the balance of research activity further toward micro

issues. • Tardiness in addressing important issues and tendency to stay too long with outmoded char-

Also published in the issue containing Day’s (1992) article is an article by Sheth (1992) titled, “Acrimony in the Ivory Tower: A Retrospective on Consumer Research,” and two invited commentaries by Bagozzi (1992) and Chakravarti (1992). Considering in tandem the issues addressed in these writings, I have often wondered whether the editorial policies of some of the scholarly journals in our field also shoulder some of the blame for marketing’s loss of influence in the academic discourse about strategy. Specifically, the editorial policies of scholarly journals in the field of consumer research that seem to be predisposed to exclude managerial implications of research from the scope of articles published. The predicament of marketing educators caught between the following editorial policy positions is unenviable:

• In order for a manuscript to be considered for review and publication in the journal, the author must clearly articulate the managerial implications of the research reported.