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The intellectual ecology of mainstream marketing research: an inquiry into the place of marketing in the family of business disciplines

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Abstract

Many inside mainstream academic marketing judge the discipline’s influence within the family of business disciplines (as well as in practice) to be in decline. Despite great research productivity, methodologies as sophisticated as any in the social sciences, and a large and rich literature, opinion and evidence suggest that academic marketing is the least influential of the mainstream academic business disciplines. Nevertheless, marketing’s decline is not inexorable. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate this perplexing situation by: (1) assembling and evaluating a number of expert opinions from within marketing; (2) exploring relations and patterns of influence among the leading academic journals in accounting, finance, management, and marketing and evaluating the position and influence of each field; (3) attempting to understand marketing’s problems; and (4) exploring avenues to move marketing back to its once prominent position among the business disciplines.

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Notes

  1. However, a recent Strategic Management Journal article would seem to take away even this role of marketing as a source of ideas: “the inflow of ideas from marketing to strategic management seems to have tapered off over the last two decades” (Nerur, Rasheed and Natarajan 2008, p. 331).

  2. If such easily changed, merely tangible journal/article attributes could account for influence, MMR would have a very easy fix—simply add more issues, more articles, and more pages to its journals. By any reasonable standard, however, intangible characteristics such as originality, significance, quality of ideas, and the importance and extent of implications are the types of rare attributes that drive influence. It is myopic to imagine that the absence of such rare factors could in any way be compensated for by an increase in page numbers or issues per year. The best (however imperfect) indicator we have of the presence (or absence) of such rare qualities is citation volume.

  3. In a round of one-on-one interviews, faculty colleagues with PhDs in accounting, finance, management, and marketing were consulted. Initial descriptions of unique claims were developed on the basis of these interviews, which were again vetted by the same group. This process continued until the criteria of: (1) non-competing and (2) non-controversial was arrived at for each description.

  4. The top three response categories noted by Klein and Zur (2009) are: (1) change board of director’s composition, (2) firm should pursue strategic alternative, and (3) oppose a merger.

  5. Taken from the Annual Reviews mission statement http://www.annualreviews.org/page/about/overview

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to express their thanks to the Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University, for supporting this project, for valuable input from colleagues at the Universities of Limerick, New Hampshire, North Florida, Colorado State, Colorado at Colorado Springs, New Mexico, and San Francisco State, as well as three blind reviewers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marketing, College of Business and Administration, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, 62901, USA

    Terry Clark

  2. Department of Marketing, Strategy and International Business, College of Business Administration, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, 1420 Austin Bluffs Parkway, Colorado Springs, CO, 80918, USA

    Thomas Martin Key

  3. School of Business, St. John Fisher College, Rochester, NY, 14618, USA

    Monica Hodis

  4. St. Edwards University, Austin, TX, USA

    Daniel Rajaratnam

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  1. Terry Clark
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Correspondence to Thomas Martin Key.

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Clark, T., Key, T.M., Hodis, M. et al. The intellectual ecology of mainstream marketing research: an inquiry into the place of marketing in the family of business disciplines. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 42, 223–241 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-013-0362-5

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