Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Marketing’s forthcoming Age of imagination

  • Theory/Conceptual
  • Published:
AMS Review Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Imagination is essential to marketing scholarship and practice. However, it is neither well understood nor sufficiently used. This paper encourages giving more attention to imagination by highlighting issues meriting further understanding. Readers are encouraged to ask questions such as: Why is imagination important? What job does it perform? Are people inherently imaginative? What forces enhance and dampen imagination? What do you have when you have an imaginative thought? Some initial observations regarding these and related issues are provided to stimulate the reader’s thinking.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Many organizations have facilitated the arrangement of these interviews. Participants include both academics and practicing executives many of whom were engaged in executive education programs at HBS. Several clients of the research firm Olson Zaltman Associates have provided interviewees. Other firms have independently provided access to managers at different organizational levels and from different functions. Executives from a wide range of industries and global locations continue to participate.

References

  • Arnould, E. J., & Thompson, C. J. (2005). Consumer culture theory (CCT): twenty years of research. Journal of Consumer Research, 31, 868–882.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ashton, K. (2015). How to Fly a horse: the secret history of creation, invention, and discovery. New York: Doubleday.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barabba, V. P. (2011). The decision loom: a design for interactive decision-making in organizations. Devon, United Kingdom: Triarchy Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barabba, V. P., & Mitroff, I. I. (2014). Business strategies for a messy world: tools for systemic problem solving. New York: Palgrave Pivot.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Barabba, V. P., & Zaltman, G. (1999). Hearing the voice of the customer. Boston: Harvard Business Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bargh, J. A. (2014). Our unconscious mind. Scientific American, 30, 30–27.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bargh, J. A., et al. (2012). Automaticity in social-cognitive processes. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(12), 593–605.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barton-Cohen, S. (1995). Mindblindness: an essay on autism and theory of mind. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Batey, M., & Furnham, A. (2008). Creativity, intelligence, and personality: a crtical review of the scattered literature. Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs, 132(4), 355–429.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beilock, S. (2010). Choke: what the secrets of the brain reveal about getting it right when you have to. New York: The Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beilock, S. (2015). How the body knows its mind. New York: Atria Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Biederman, I., & Vessel, E. A. (2006). Perceptual pleasure and the brain. American Scientist, 94, 249–255.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, B. (2009). On the origin of stories: evolution, cognition, and fiction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burton, R. (2008). On being certain: believing You Are right even when You’re Not. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cameron, C. D., Brown-Jannuzzi, J. L., & Payne, B. K. (2012). Sequential priming measures of implicit social cognition: a meta-analysis of associations with behavior and explicit attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16(4), 330–350.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chan, J., & Schunn, C. (2014). The impact of analogies on creative concept generation: lessons from an in vivo study in engineering design. Cognitive Science, 2014, 1–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chavez-Eahle, R.A. (2007). Creativity, DNA, and Cerebral Blood Flow.

  • Clark, K. (1978). What is a masterpiece? London: Thames and Hudson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Colston, H.L. and Katz, A.N. (Eds.)(2005). Figurative Language Comprehension: Social and Cultural Influences. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

  • Coulson, S. (2001). Semantic leaps: frame-shifting and conceptual blending in meaning construction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Currey, M. (2015). Daily rituals: How artists work. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Custers, R., & Aarts, H. (2010). The unconscious will: How the pursuit of goals operates outside of conscious awareness. Science, 329(2), 47–50.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Czikszentmihalyi, M. (1988). Society, culture, and person: A systems view of creativity. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The nature of creativity: contemporary psychological perspectives (pp. 325–339). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Damasio, A. (2010). Self comes to mind: constructing the conscious brain. New York: Pantheon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davenport, T. H., & Kirby, J. (2016). Only humans need apply: winners and losers in the Age of smart machines. New York: Harper Collins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dell, C. (2010). What makes a masterpiece? London: Thames and Hudson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dennett, D. C. (2013). Intuition pumps and other tools for thinking. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dijksterhuis, A., & Meurs, T. (2006). Where creativity resides: the generative power of unconscious thought. Consciousness and Cognition, 15, 136–146.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dijksterhuis, A., & Nordgren, L. F. (2006). A theory of unconscious thought. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1(2), 95–109.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dijksterhuis, A., & van Olden, Z. (2006). On the benefits of thinking unconsciously: unconscious thought Can increase post-choice satisfaction. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 627–631.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., & Kelly, D. R. (2007). Grit: perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 6.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eastwick, P. W., Finkel, E. J., Krishnamurti, T., & Loewenstein, G. (2008). Mispredicting distress following romantic breakup: revealing the time course of the affective forecasting error. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(3), 800–807.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Edelman, G. M. (1999). Bright Air, brilliant fire: on the matter of the MInd. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edelman, G. M., & Tononi, G. (2000). A universe of consciousness: How matter becomes imagination. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Evans, A. D., & Lee, K. (2013). Emergence of lying in very young children. Developmental Psychology, 49(10), 1958–1963.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fauconnier, G., & Turner, M. (2002). The way we think: conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Feinberg, M., & Willer, R. (2015). From gulf to bridge: when Do moral arguments facilitate political influence? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(12), 165–1681.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feldman, J. A. (2006). From molecule to metaphor: a neural theory of language. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Finke, R. A., Ward, T. B., & Smith, S. M. (1992). Creative cognition: theory, research, and applications. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Firestein, S. (2012). Ignorance: How it drives science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Forester Consulting (2014). “The Creative Dividend: How Creativity Impacts Business Results.

  • Frankland, S.M. (2015). Harvard Gazette. October 5th.

  • Frankland, S. M., & Greene, J. D. (2015). An architecture for encoding sentence meaning in left Mid-superior temporal cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112, 37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, S. (2005). How the body shapes the mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gardner, H. (2006). Changing minds: the Art and science of changing Our Own and other People’s minds. Boston: Harvard Business Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gardner, H. (2011). Creating minds: an anatomy of creativity. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gentner, D., Holyoak, K. J., & Kokinov, B. N. (Eds.). (2001). The analogical mind: perspectives from cognitive science. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gigerenzer, G. (2007). Gut feelings: the intelligence of the unconscious. New York: The Penguin Group.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilbert, D. (2006). Stumbling on happiness. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gordon, R. M. (1995). Simulation without introspection or inference from Me to You. In M. Davies & T. Stone (Eds.), Mental simulation: evaluations and applications. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Graziano, M. (2013). Consciousness and the social brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gundry, L. K., Munoz-Fernandez, A., Ofstein, L. F., & Ortega-Egea, T. (2016). Innovating in organizations: a model of climate components facilitating the creation of New value. Creativity and Innovation Management, 25(2), 223–238.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hall, T., & Wengel, R. (2015). Nielsen breakthrough innovation report: U.S. Edition. New York: The Nielsen Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harari, Y. N. (2015). Sapiens: a brief history of humankind. New York: HarperCollins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holyoak, K. J., & Thagard, P. (1995). Mental leaps: analogy in creative thought. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Howard, J. A., & Sheth, J. N. (1969). The theory of buyer behavior. New York: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hsee, C. K., & Bowen, R. (2016). The Pandora effect: the power and peril of curiosity. Psychological Science, 27(5), 659–666.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Humphrey, N. (2006). Seeing Red: A study in consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Jaiswal, N. K., & Dhar, R. L. (2015). Transformational leadership, innovation climate, creative self-efficacy and employee creativity: a multilevel study. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 51, 30–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jaynes, J. (1976). The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, S. (2010). Where good ideas come from: the natural history of innovation. New York: Riverhead Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jung-Beeman, M., et al. (2004). Neural activity when people solve verbal problems with insight. PLoS Biology, 2(4), 500–510.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kagan, J. (2006). An Argument for Mind (p. 257). New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kagan, J. (2016). On being human: Why mind matters. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kandel, E. (2012). The Age of insight: the quest to understand the unconscious in Art, mind, and brain from Vienna 1900 to the present. New York: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Korn, P. (2013). Why We make things and Why It matters: the education of a craftsman. Boston: David R. Godine Publisher.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kounios, J. and Beeman, M. (2009). The Aha! Moment: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Insight. Current Directions in Psychological Science. Vol18. Number 4, pp. 210–216.

  • Kumar, M. (2008). Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the great debate about the nature of reality. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • LaTour, K. A., & Carbone, L. P. (2014). Sticktion: assessing memory for the customer experience. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 55(4), 342–53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leonard, D., & Swap, W. (2005). Deep smarts: How to cultivate and transfer enduring business wisdom. Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leslie, I. (2014). Curious: the desire to know and Why your future depends on It. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Libet, B. (2004). Mind time: the temporal factor in consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Livio, M. (2013). Brilliant blunders: from Darwin to Einstein- colossal mistakes by great scientists that changed Our understanding of life and the universe. New York: Simon and Schuster.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lobel, T. (2014). Sensation: the New science of physical intelligence. New York: Simon and Schuster.

    Google Scholar 

  • MacInnis, D. J. (2011). A framework for conceptual contributions in marketing. Journal of Marketing, 75, 136–154.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marketing Science Institute (2016). Research Priorities 2016–2018. Cambridge, MA

  • Martin, C.J. (2015). Seeing the Unseen: Sensemaking as a Systematic Process for Radical Innovation. The EMS 2015 Conference. Baltimore, Md.

  • Mather, G. (2009). Foundations of sensation and perception (2nd ed.). New York: Psychology Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mick, D.G., Bateman, T.S. and Lutz, R.J. (2008). Wisdom —The Pinnacle of Human Virtues and a Central Foundation for Macromarketing. MSI Reports. Issue Two. No. 08–002. Pp. 93–117.

  • Micu, A. C., & Plummer, J. T. (2010). Measurable emotions: How television Ads really work – patterns of reactions to commercials Can demonstrate advertising effectiveness. Journal of Advertising Research, 50(2), 137–153.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, A. J. (2002). Einstein, Picasso: space, time, and the beauty that causes havoc. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mitroff, I., & Linstone, H. A. (1993). The unbounded mind: breatking the chains of traditional business thinking. Oxford: The Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mitroff, I. I., & Silvers, A. (2010). Dirty rottten strategies: How We trick ourselves and others into solving the wrong problems precisely. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oswick, C. and Grant. D. (2015). Re-Imagining Images of Organization: A Conversation With Gareth Morgan. Journal of Management Inquiry. Pp. 1–6.

  • Pastory, E. (2005). Thinking with things: toward a New vision of Art. Austin: University of Austin Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Phillips, D.M., Jerry C. Olson, and Hans Baumgartner (1995). "Consumption Visions in Consumer Decision Making", in Advances in Consumer Research Volume 22, eds. Frank R. Kardes and Mita Sujan, Provo, UT : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 280–284.

  • Pinker, S. (2007). The stuff of thought: language as a window into human nature. New York: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Plucker, J. A., Esping, A., Kaufman, J. D., & Avitia, M. J. (2015). Creativity and intelligence. In S. Goldstein (Ed.), Handbook of intelligence: evolutionary theory, historical perspective, and current concepts (pp. 283–291). NY: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Price, L. L. (2014). Obliquity, Wonderment and The Grand Adventure of Doing Consumer Research. Association for Consumer Research. Presidential Address 2014.

  • Rajagopal, P. and Montgomery, N.V. (2011). I Imagine, I Experience, I Like: The False Experience Effect. Journ of Consumer Research. Vol 38. December.

  • Rapp, J. M., & Hill, R. P. (2015). Lordy, lordy look Who’s 40!” the journal of consumer research reaches a milestone. Journal of Consumer Research, 42, 19–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reibstein, D. J., Day, G., & Wind, J. (2009). Is marketing academia losing its Way? Journal of Marketing, 73(4), 1–3.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rescher, N. (2009). Unknowability: an inquiry into the limits of knowledge. Lanham: Lexington Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rescher, N. (2010). An introduction to the problems of philosophy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Root-Bernstein. (1989). Discovering: inventing and solving problems at the frontiers of scientific knowledge. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Runco, M. A. (2014). Creativity: theories and themes: research, development, and practice (2nd ed.). New York: Elsevier.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sasser, S. L., Koslow, S., & Kilgour, M. (2013). Matching creative agencies with results-driven marketers: Do client really need highly creative advertising? Journal of Advertising Research, 53(3), 297–312.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schacter, D., Addis, D. R., & Buckner, R. L. (2008). Episodic simulation of future events. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1124, 39–60.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schulz, K. (2010). Being wrong: adventures in the margin of error. New York: Harper Collins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, M. A. (2008). The importance of stupidity in scientific research. Journal of Cell Science, 121, 1771.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stein, K. (2007). The genius engine: where memory, reason, passion, viiolence, and creativity intersect in the human brain. New York: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sternberg, R. J., & Davidson, J. E. (Eds.). (1995). The nature of insight. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tarvis, C., & Aronson, E. (2007). Mistakes were made (but Not by Me): Why We justify foolish beliefs, Bad decisions, and hurtful acts. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thagard, P. (2010). How brains make mental models. In Magnani (Ed.), Model-based reasoning in science and technology. Berlin: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thibodeau, P. H., & Boroditsky, L. (2011). Metaphors We think with: The role of metaphor in reasoning. PloS One, 6(2), e16782.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tomasello, M. (2009). The cultural origins of human cognition. Boston: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tough, P. (2012). How children succeed: grit, curiosity, and the hidden power of character. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Varan, D., Lang, A., Barwise, P., Weber, R., & Bellman, S. (2015). How reliable are Neuromarketers’ measures of advertising effectiveness? data from ongoing research holds No common truth among vendors”. Journal of Advertising Research, 55(2), 176–191.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vartanian, O., & Goel, V. (2005). Neural correlates of creative cognition. In C. Martinadale, P. Locher, & V. Petrov (Eds.), Evolutionary and neurocognitive approaches to aesthetics, creativity and the arts Amityville. New York: Baywood Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Von Stumm, S., Hell, B., & Chamorro-Premuzie, T. (2011). The humgry mind: intellectual curiosity is the third pillar of academic peformance. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(6), 574–588.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ward, T. B., Smith, S. M., & Vaid, J. (Eds.). (1997). Creative thought: an investigation of conceptual structures and processes. Washington: The American Psychological Association.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wegner, D. (2002). The illusion of conscious will. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weick, K. E., Sutcliffe, K. M., & Obstfeld, D. (2005). Organizing the process of sensemaking. Organization Science, 16, 409–421.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • West, D., Caruana, A., & Leelapanyalert, K. (2013). What makes Win, place, or show? judging creatvity in advertising at award shows. Journal of Advertising Research, 53(3), 324–338.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wheeler, S. C., & DeMarree, K. G. (2009). Multiple mechanisms of prime-to-behavior effects. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 3, 566–581.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yadav, M. S. (2010). The decline of conceptual articles and implications for knowledge development. Journal of Marketing, 74(1), 1–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yanofsky, N. S. (2013). The outer limits of reason: what science, mathematics, and logic cannot tell US. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zaltman, G. (2000). Consumer researchers: take a hike! The Journal of Consumer Research, 26(4), 423–428.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zaltman, G. (2003). How customers think. Boston: Harvard Business Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zaltman, G. (2014). Are You mistaking facts for insights? lighting Up Advertising’s dark continent of imagination. Journal of Advertising Research, 54(4), 373–376.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zaltman, G., & Zaltman, L. H. (2008). Marketing metaphoria: what deep metaphors reveal about Consumers’ lives. Boston: Harvard Business Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zaltman, G., Olson J., Forr J. (2015). Toward A New Science of Marketing For Hospitality Managers. Cornell Hospitality Journal. November. Pp. 1–8.

  • Zeki, S. (1993). A vision of the brain. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zeki, S. (1999). Inner vision: an exploration of Art and the brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

First, I would like to thank the four people whose thoughtful commentaries follow this paper. They are Robin Coulter (University of Connecticut), Alice Tybout and Bobby Calder (Northwestern University), and William Wilkie (Notre Dame University). Other people provided helpful critique at various stages in the development of the paper. They include Vincent Barabba (General Motors), Michael Beer (Harvard Business School), Nancy Cox (Hallmark), Ian Mitroff (UC Berkeley), Jerry Olson (Olson Zaltman Associates), Joseph Plummer (Columbia University and Olson Zaltman Associates), Malcom Salter (Harvard Business School), and Robert Spitzer.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard Business School and Partner, Olson Zaltman Associates, 3010 Grand Bay Blvd, Unit 483, Longboat Key, FL, 34228, USA

    Gerald Zaltman

Authors
  1. Gerald Zaltman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gerald Zaltman.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Zaltman, G. Marketing’s forthcoming Age of imagination. AMS Rev 6, 99–115 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13162-016-0082-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13162-016-0082-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation