Resurrecting marketing: Focus on the phenomena!

Abstract

This commentary provides three complementary perspectives to the Hunt et al. (2022, in this issue) article “The marketing discipline’s troubled trajectory: The manifesto conversation, candidates for central focus, and prognosis for renewal.” First, the evolution of marketing as an academic discipline should be assessed also in relation to other fields. Second, it is time for an honest stocktake of the wider impact of marketing to societies and the biosphere. Third, an enduring and fruitful sense of community for marketing scholars could be found from marketing phenomena instead of the always contested theoretical perspectives.

Towards a Marketing Renaissance: Challenging Underlying Assumptions

“…Hunt et al (2022; cf. Nenonen, 2022) suggested that marketing could be renewed by focussing on marketing phenomena (plural) – that is, on marketing topics or issues central to the discipline. However, to re-invent marketing as a discipline, it is not sufficient to focus on several, possibly disparate marketing topics (phenomena).…”

Towards a Bhaskarian Metatheory for Marketing Systems

“…Macromarketing has emphasized broader societal interactions, addressing crucial issues like poverty and sustainability (DeQuero-Navarro, Stanton, and Klein 2021; Eckhardt, Dholakia, and Varman 2013; Fırat 2013; Mele and Spena 2021; Shultz 2016; Varey 2012). Moreover, macromarketing has acknowledged that many current manifestations of crisis are intimately tied to marketing (Löbler 2016; Nenonen 2022; Voola et al 2022; Wooliscroft and Ganglmair-Wooliscroft 2018). However, as Kindermann et al (2023) and others have noted, much of the mainstream of the discipline has long faced critiques, such as; - a reductive concern with micro issues and short-term pragmatic problems, leading to a lack of theory development and contribution to domains outside of marketing research (Clark et al 2014); - rhetoric of value trapped in selfishly motivated consumers, a disregard for inequality and the stratification of social groups, and a false sense of individual choice and freedom (Saren et al 2007); - part of a relatively ‘uncritical’ business school agenda abandoning social, intellectual and ethical values in favour of uncritical managerialism (Dholakia and Firat 2017; Witkowski 2005), and; - a pseudo-conflict between quantitative and qualitative approaches (Gummesson 2003).…”