Scientometric Analysis of Marketing Theoreticians

Abstract

Albert Einstein notably asserted that “It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.” Cast against the backdrop of Einstein’s assertion, the present research critically examines the enduring yet unresolved controversy regarding marketing as a science. Consider that the marketing discipline is nearing its first-century of inception and the Journal of Marketing is approaching its eighth decade of publication. Yet there is a paucity of theory formation within the marketing discipline and marketing academicians still debate the epistemology of marketing itself. The century between 1913 and 2013 witnessed a dearth of theory development toward advancement of a cohesive body of marketing knowledge. Shankar (2009) concurs: “…marketing has long been the poor relation, intellectually, to other management disciplines with the academic study of management itself pretty low down the social science pecking order.” He specifically calls for the current research toward “elevating the scholarly, intellectual or academic status of marketing” (p. 683).

Epistemology is the study of knowledge and understanding, and is the basis for theory building. Theory building is important because it is the fundamental framework for analysis, facilitating hypothesis testing and is essential for advancing marketing knowledge and practice. Sutton and Staw (1995) suggest that “the lack of consensus on exactly what theory is may explain why it is so difficult to develop strong theories in the behavioral sciences” (p. 372). Following which, they suggest five “wrong-way” signs for what theory is. “Marketing theory” has been sparse at best, and is largely borrowed from classical and neo-classical economics, contractual law theory, and allied social sciences. None of the above has led to a high degree of self-development or generation of original theories of marketing. The reality is that effects applications of extant theories dominate marketing after one century.

This research seeks to critically review a body of marketing theory to illuminate gaps in the epistemic foundations of marketing knowledge development, and to critically assess the generation and advancement of the marketing theories within a consonant framework. The goal is to empirically assess the impact of marketing theoreticians’ contributions to knowledge advancement to marketing and allied social science disciplines, using scientometrics. Second, this study seeks to identify a body of theoretical development emanating from the marketing discipline that has been proffered by outstanding marketing academicians. The research aspiration is to potentially link the theoreticians to the epistemic process in the marketing discipline. The applied contributions of this study are to glean implications from this analysis toward proffering normative insights into the development of both emerging marketing scholars as well as promoting theory development within the marketing discipline. The attendant questions to answer are: Should emerging scholars learn how to develop theory? How should the Ph.D. pedagogy and curricula address the development of theory in the discipline? Grounded in a relevant sub dynamic of the theory of composition, and using scientometric analysis (Nalimov and Mulchenko 1969), the domain of references across the allied behavioral science literatures will be empirically assessed.