A Critical Inquiry into the Theory and Practice of Marketing
Terry Smith
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The Roots and Uses of Marketing Knowledge
A Critical Inquiry into the Theory and Practice of Marketing
Terry Smith
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Marketing theory is often developed in isolation not collaboration; theoretical perspectives sometimes are ignorant of the diversity of marketing practice. In "The roots and uses of marketing knowledge: a critical inquiry into the theory and practice of marketing", the author engages with the vital conversation about how marketing knowledge is created, disseminated and consumed, looking beyond the traditional reification of practice in theory and verification of theory in practice.
The ontology of this work is anchored in subjective individual meaning; the epistemological stance assumes that this meaning is socially constructed. Consequently, rich empirical data, grounded in the context of experiential evidence, is extracted from a comprehensive range of marketing constituencies: academics, practitioners, managers, consultants, authors, lecturers and students.
In its examination of the polarities, hybridity and iterative flow of marketing knowledge creation and consumption, this text posits a cohesive argument for a theory/practice bipartite fusion not dichotomy, adding valuable insights into the textual, contextual and pedagogical representations of marketing knowledge.
The history and future of marketing knowledge is examined with the aid of instructive illustrations and insightful first-hand experience. Drawing on extensive qualitative research from a broad range of influential producers and vital consumers, Dr. Smith presents a relevant, exciting marketing knowledge framework which will be a vital resource for academics, students and practitioners.
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As a necessary extended pre-amble to Part 2, the purpose of Part 1 is to analyse what may constitute knowledge, examining the philosophical foundations within which the research inquiry can be framed, discussing the key knowledge relationships in marketing, and considering the alternative approaches from which a suitable methodology can be constructed. Drawing on extensive secondary research on the epistemological origins and ontological roots of knowledge, as well subject-specific marketing literature, this helps to âcontextualise the background, identify knowledge gaps, avoid conceptual and methodological pitfalls of previous research, and provide a rationale for the studyâ (Giles et al., 2013: 39).
Chapter 2, Philosophical underpinnings of the inquiry, features an extensive literature review analysing the roots and nature of knowledge, together with a strategic overview and thorough assessment of extant marketing knowledge in both theoretical and practical domains. Theory directly related to empirical findings is integrated in Chapters 5, 6, 7 and 8.
Chapter 3, Knowledge relationships in marketing, traces theoretical and contextual origins, together with the discourses within which the battle for academic hegemony in establishing the ânormative modelâ has taken place.
Chapter 4, Methodological approaches to inquiry into marketing knowledge, provides an in-depth review of the possible methodological direction and a justification for the one selected as most appropriate for this inquiry.
For ease of understanding, Figure 1.2 describes visually the microstructure of the following section.
1Introduction
1.1Outline of chapter
Whilst this chapter is prefatory to the substance of the content, it will also provide essential context and dynamic to its discussion: to delineate the origins and key dynamics of this inquiry which is to investigate the âthe meaning of social action in the context of the life-world and from the actorsâ perspectiveâ (de Gialdino, 1992: 43). The focus in the title of this text â the roots and uses of marketing knowledge â is purposively in the plural as there are many ways in which knowledge is used: functionally, practically, philosophically, pedagogically, as utility, symbolically, as a source of power, identity, even egotistically.
The value of knowledge, and indeed how knowledge is consumed, is a principal epistemological quality and consideration. The epistemological stance of this inquiry assumes that meaning is socially constructed, grounded in context; the scope of the ontological investigation covers different types of marketing knowledge as well as different types of marketing constituents and explores that subjective individual meaning. However, in the tradition of hermeneutic inquiry, this is a mereological approach, in the sense that the parts (types of knowledge and types of constituents) are examined in relation to the whole: the macro perspective aided by the micro contextual insights. Consequently, rich empirical data extracted from a comprehensive range of marketing constituencies â academics, practitioners, managers, consultants, authors, lecturers and students â are analysed in the interpretive paradigm using a phenomenological methodology with grounded theory data capture and thematic analysis.
In its examination of the polarities, hybridity and iterative flow of marketing knowledge creation and consumption, the framework which has evolved presents a unique perspective on the ideologically-driven power relations implicit in the theory/practice dichotomy debate. In place of duality, this new scholarly structure, and its accompanying argument, adds valuable insights into the theoretical, practical and pedagogical representation of marketing and introduces a feasible, holistic perspective created in marketing praxis which posits a cohesive argument for a theory/practice bipartite fusion not dichotomy.
1.2Brief introduction
Lewinâs famous (1951: 169) aperçu âThere is nothing so practical as a good theoryâ (sic) locates the source of knowledge as directly traceable to academe and targeted squarely at the context of practice. In marketing, theory often reflects the contextual dynamics of the marketplace: knowledge in practice is reified in theory; theory is verified in practice. It is a performative science where theory and practice often canât be separated â the discipline-knowledge from the discipline-control â since it âsimultaneously describes and constructs its subject matter [. . .] and arises in and through unified discourseâ as Cochoy (1998: 196) argues. But not always. Sometimes there is synergy; sometime there is separation. Theoretical marketing perspectives, where theory is often developed in isolation not collaboration, are sometimes ignorant of the diversity of marketing practice, evident in âthe micro-discourses and narratives that marketing actors draw upon to represent their workâ (Ardley and Quinn, 2014: 97). Indeed, the distanced relationship between academics and practitioners â purely theoretical observation â can be what Triana (2009) describes as âlecturing birds on flyingâ. The separation gap is somewhere in the spaces between theoretical rigidity âin aspicâ and empirical dynamism âin situâ, between rigour and relevance, and between a posteriori and a priori knowledge (Smith et al., 2015: 1029). And yet, discussion of theoretical and empirical marketing knowledge â marketing theory and marketing practice in text or context â is often interstitial intelligence in the sense that knowledge occurs in between these two oppositional epistemes.
It was Aristotle who separated theory and practice, distinguishing thinking and doing. But can there be practice without a theory of practice? Isnât thinking a form of practice in itself? It is also sometimes a hybrid of the two: a âsynthetic and magpie approachâ as Sim and van Loom (2004) refer to it. Whilst there may not be a perfect fusion between empirical and philosophical evaluations of marketing, the synthesis of theory and practice â praxis â offers a perspective approaching a rapprochement. Praxis, according to Heilman, (2003: 274) can be described as âa synthetic product of the dialectic between theory and practiceâ. Consequently, marketing knowledge is a product of marketplace dynamics, theoretical observation and speculation, as well as a mixture of both. Practice often has tacit knowledge which is not expressed as theory; theory often has explicit knowledge not related to practice. This is exactly the locus and, indeed, the focus of this book: an emic and etic inquiry into the roots and uses of marketing knowledge.
The nexus of this inquiry, therefore, is the perennial dichotomy between theory and practice, something which Baker (2001: 24) points out âexisted long before the subject of marketing became accepted as an academic discipline in its own rightâ. Indeed, discussion on the theory/practice conundrum has been going on for some considerable time now. Marketing evidences a chimerical confusion of disparate yet connected narratives: as a key social phenomenon; a prescriptive managerial framework; and as a subject for intense pedagogical scrutiny. Whether business practice, applied discipline or social institution, marketing is characterised by reciprocity, inter-relatedness, and symbolic symbiosis. It is often presented as a meta-narrative, âa narrative about narrativesâ (Hunt, 1994). It is the intention of this text to analyse and integrate these divergent and convergent strands by presenting all of these narratives: empirical, theoretical and pedagogical.
1.3Origins of the research
Marketing has been described as a triad of philosophy, method and function (Morgan, 1996: 19), but it is often difficult to determine whether the source or sources of marketing knowledge are experiential or theoretical. Although the need for a posteriori âtheoryâ based on scientific principles defines âmarketingâ as a philosophy more than just a mere activity, prior to the theory development of marketing progressed by Jones, Fish and Hagerty between 1900â1910, it was viewed as solely an applied, practical phenomenon. Bartels (1970: 33) captures this perfectly: âMarketing was a discovery since âmarketing is recognised as an idea and not just an activity [. . .] . Before the idea was created, the term âmarketingâ was applied, the simple task had just been called âtradeâ, âdistributionâ or âexchangeâ [. . .]â. And whilst it is, as Hackley (2009: 643) observes, âa bifurcated discipline occupying two parallel universesâ, marketing is after all a discursive, integrative discipline of circular, reiterative knowledge production, often located in the situated learning or praxis of the practitioner, often in the reductionist notions of the academic. Yet despite its synthetic and integrative nature, it is a composite of constituencies and constitutive elements, exposed to exogenous economic, social and even political influences (Tadajewski and Saren, 2008), and characterised by endogenous factional rather than collegiate concerns. Mittlelstaedt (1990) recognises its âmagpieâ nature; Hackley (2001) identifies its âanthropological turnâ; others critique its Western world view fixation (Gould, 1991; Jack, 2008) and monotheist managerialism (Brown, 1995).
Chote (1999) railed against the myopia of this âessentialistâ academic approach claiming that it is âanalysing real world behaviour in ways that are theoretically defensible but palpably absurdâ. Hollanderâs (1989) delineation of practice not being entirely bereft of thought and thought as being often driven by practice identifies the crux of the matter. Two extreme approaches in the search for âknowledgeâ â rationalism and empiricism â mark out the epistemological territory of this inquiry. Rationalism claims that there is an a priori existence of knowledge which is intrinsically objective and can be obtained deductively. Empiricism argues for a posteriori knowledge derived inductively from experience. Used as both a verb and a noun, marketing has roots in both rational and irrational domains: the orthodox economistâs obsession with perfect market equilibrium in virtual markets set against the sociologistâs perspective of socially constructed meaning. It is not just about supply and demand. Nor is it just about its social nature. It is both.