RestoringPhronesisand practice: marketing’s forgotten P’s

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the evolution of marketing’s philosophical conversation over the past 120 years, focusing on the emergent meaning of the notion that marketing should become more “scientific”. Design/methodology/approach – This paper focuses on the US academic marketing literature, primarily journal articles and books published in the first half of the 20th century. Findings – The Aristotelian distinction between techné, epistemé and phronesis provides a rich basis for framing philosophical discussion in marketing, and should supplant the art-science debate and Anderson’s distinction between science1 and science2. Prior to 1959, the marketing journals provided a forum for phronesis, though this diminished as the academic marketing community largely abandoned the inductive, contextual approach in favour of a deductive, “scientific” methodology. The Ford Foundation played an important role in effecting this change. Practical implications – The paper highlights the importance of forums where practitioners can reflect on the ethical and social implications of their practices and then work to enhance these practices for the greater social good. Social implications – Questions the value of distinctions between marketing theorists and practitioners and the consequential focus of marketing journals. Originality/value – Advances the concept of phronesis in the marketing literature and distinguishes it from epistemé, which has dominated academic marketing discourse over the past 60 years.

A Macromarketing Prescription for Covid-19: Solidarity and Care Ethics

“…As marketing’s ‘forgotten P’, a phronetic approach “should provide, not only a foundation for marketing thought but also a vital link between marketing theory and practice” (Kavanagh 2014, p.332). Two elements of phronetic interventions are transparency and inclusivity, which are requisite to collective transcendence and ‘symbolic bridging and merging’ (Burke 1984; Hyman, Kostyk and Shabbir 2020; Jack 2008).…”

Marketing (as) Rhetoric: paradigms, provocations, and perspectives

“…Goldsmith (1999) threw in personalisation, personnel and procedures for good measure. And Kavanagh (2014) found two "forgotten" Ps, practice and phronesis, that had somehow fallen down the back of our saggy scholarly sofa.…”

Paradigm debates and marketing theory, thought and practice

“…The idea that it was only with the publication of Converse's (1945) survey of marketing scholars and practitioners about the key contributions and core concepts of marketing that this community adopted a stance of self-reflexivity about the discipline and its impact on wider society is unconvincing. Some of these issues are interrogated by our first contributor, Kavanagh (2014).…”

“…But we get much more than this mere listing of themes indicates. What we see in the contributions by Hunt (2014), Sherry (2014), Belk (2014), Firat (2014) and Kavanagh (2014) in this issue are not just arguments directed at other paradigmatic camps, but the paradigm debates given more flesh and brute empirical realism than has been witnessed outside of the conference circuit (Brown, 2012, p. 17).…”

“…A fairly uncontroversial position, then, is that the production and consumption of knowledge is irredeemably intellectual, social and political with personal biography, (self) interest and acrimony refracted through our publications (Brown, 1995(Brown, , 1999(Brown, , 2000(Brown, , 2012Desmond, 1995;Jones, 2012;Kavanagh, 2014). But just because we share paradigmatic perspectives, does not imply identical interests and intellectual cooperation rather than conflict.…”