Researchingwithplaces: on using engaged scholarship in marketing

Abstract

Purpose As a core element of the marketing mix, place is of central concern within marketing. Yet existing literature typically presents accounts of research about rather than with places. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to argue that engaged scholarship can help academics, practitioners, policymakers and communities to work collaboratively to solve place-based “wicked problems”. Specifically, this paper focuses on high street revitalisation, a challenge frustrating policymakers and communities since the 1980s. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws on a mixed-method research project conducted with place-based stakeholders in Manchester, the UK, to discuss the benefits and challenges arising through an engaged scholarship approach. Findings The authors outline several benefits to engaged scholarship, including forming tailored solutions to place-based problems, engendering trust and ongoing research partnerships and generating real-world impact beyond the academy. However, the authors also draw attention to the challenges including political sensitivities within places, additional layers of scrutiny and challenges to dissemination arising through partnership working with organisations external to the university. Originality/value Whereas a range of techniques have been used to research places within marketing, engaged scholarship is lacking. This paper, therefore, provides first-hand insights into the benefits and challenges that the authors experienced using the approach. This is of significance because of the rising importance of generating real-world impact within the academy, which the authors feel requires more institutional support. This paper also suggests Van de Ven’s diamond model of engaged scholarship extends to encompass issues of research governance.

Reflections from the Business School's margins: On doing engaged scholarship

“…What this reveals is a much deeper structural problem in the UK regarding community capacity and leadership for change (High Streets Task Force, 2023). Second, engaged scholarship involves working at inconvenient times and in unfamiliar places (Steadman and Millington, 2022), which the IPM has extensive experience of. Our message to academics, therefore, is to get out of their comfort zones into a range of everyday community spaces to more fully understand the nature of urban change in light of people's lived experiences.…”

“…Our engaged approach necessitates a certain plasticity to enable 'people from different traditions to join without renouncing their respective worldviews' (Miettinen et al, 2009(Miettinen et al, : 1313, such as national government, local authorities, Business Improvement Districts, professional bodies, local traders, civic society groups and local residents. Yet, of course, working in diverse research teams can be testing due to different styles of working, disciplinary backgrounds and positionalities (Steadman and Millington, 2022). Even though we feel like 'outsiders' within our academic department since our research style differs from the Business School's intelligentsia, local communities can likewise be suspicious of academics and their role in making places better.…”

“…The High Street UK 2020 project, for example, involved working with 250 stakeholders from 10 UK towns (Parker et al, 2017), followed by Bringing Big Data to Small Users, a government-funded project led by a non-academic partner involving a consortium of national stakeholders, together with representative groups from seven UK towns (Mumford et al, 2021). The know-how derived through this work fed into the Vital and Viable Neighbourhoods programme in collaboration with two local authorities (Manchester and Stockport) and involving stakeholder groups across 13 district centres (Steadman and Millington, 2022). The main outcome of the above projects has been the co-creation of adaptable toolkits, frameworks and learning resources designed for use by local stakeholders.…”

“…Being present means being sensitive to the complexities of places and the people who live, work, commute, travel and play there, but more importantly, being attentive to how people produce knowledge, when and where their ideas and agendas become persuasive and how these create the conditions of possibility to generate different urban narratives and understandings (Sheppard, 2015b). This is a tall task in the high street context, as the paucity of partnership working (High Streets Task Force, 2023), frustration with local government and gatekeeping by long-time entrenched stakeholders, including democratically elected members (Steadman and Millington, 2022), can constrain our ability to engage a range of voices in engaged scholarship research.…”

“…Indeed, we have encountered issues producing academic articles from our applied research even amongst the academic team. Engaged scholarship prioritises solving local issues over academic theory development, and methods are tailored to local communities with resultant data often ‘messy’ and not easily communicated through academic papers or lacking the ‘robustness’ required to pass academic muster (Steadman and Millington, 2022). Yet, academic articles are arguably ineffective alone for achieving ‘real-world’ impact, especially given the opaqueness of much academic writing which can be ‘esoteric to the point of academic parody’ (Schmitt et al, 2022: 753), thereby building ‘…barricades to keep readers out rather than open doors to invite them in’ (Tourish, 2020: 105) and leading to a ‘pandemic of [in]accessibility’ (Cayla, 2023: n.d).…”