Abstract
Marketing is many things to many people, and our view of it is framed by the contexts in which we encounter it. For critics, marketing is a field of thought and practice that has become closely identified with humbug and hyperbole.1 We might have an enduring fascination with the way it tantalizes us with fantasies of self-realization, but in general, marketing receives a bad press for its trite theories, its impudent techniques, and its tendency to sneak uninvited into every corner of life. In the developed world, we could hardly deny that marketing has contributed to a level of material affl uence that our grandparents would have thought utterly enviable. Yet, few of us would say that it makes us happier or more fulfilled, and our attempts to understand how marketing really works are patchy, at best. Even for the marketing cognoscenti, the state of the field seems poorly articulated. Marketing’s “how-to” management books offer characteristically underargued and overgeneralized prescriptions, typically juxtaposed with carefully edited, but “so-what?” case examples. Academics don’t do much better — marketing’s academic researchers produce huge volumes of esoteric findings that rarely seem to connect with the everyday priorities of managers and consumers. More often than not, stand-out marketing innovations simply don’t seem to fit conventional text book explanations. All in all, marketing is a huge economic and cultural presence with far reaching implications for us all, yet we still don’t understand nearly enough about this familiar yet enigmatic subject.
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Notes
For more on this topic see C. Hackley (2003) “‘We Are All Customers Now’: Rhetorical Strategy and Ideological Control in Marketing Management Texts,” Journal of Management Studies 40(5), 1325–1352.
Another excellent source is S. Brown (2005) Writing Marketing, London, Sage.
For example, see B. Ardley (2005) “Marketing Managers and Their Life World: Explorations in Strategic Planning Using the Phenomenological Interview,” The Marketing Review, 5(2), 111–127. ISSN: 1472–1384.
For more on implicit theories in advertising management see A. J. Kover (1995) “Copywriters’ Implicit Theories of Communication: An Exploration,” Journal of Consumer Research, 21, March, 598–611.
C. Hackley (2003) “How Divergent Beliefs Cause Account Team Conflict”, International Journal of Advertising, 22(3), 313–332.
I’ve tried to describe my understanding of account planning in several academic papers, including C. Hackley (2003) “Account Planning: Current Agency Perspectives on An Advertising Enigma”, Journal of Advertising Research43(2), 235–246. Two of the more authoritative accounts include.
S. Pollitt (1979) “How I Started Account Planning in Agencies.” Campaign, April 20.
J. Steel (1988) Truth, Lies and Advertising: The Art of Account Planning. New York, Wiley.
I became familiar with the term through work done by my former student, Marco Nappolini, with whom I wrote a working paper about product placement in movies that can be accessed at http://digirep.rhul.ac.uk/items/5765dcaae5d1–4351-d3c6-b649127880a3/5/(accessed 8.5.2013). I’ve stretched the flexibility of the metaphor to suit a wider purpose in using it to express the way marketing shapes consumer environments and frames consumption choices. Since writing this book I’ve become aware of one or two marketing companies who use the term, though not in the sweeping way that I do.
See, in particular, T. Adorno (1991), The Culture Industry, ed. J.M. Bernstein, London, Routledge. for the view that mass culture is exploitative and formulaic, and lacks the quality that high art has to activate aesthetic and moral responses in audiences.
My estimate is 1 million, expressed in several earlier books (e.g., C. Hackley (2009)Marketing: A Critical Introduction, London, Sage) and based on an estimate of students taking trade examinations including Chartered Institute of Marketing, CAM, Institute of Direct Marketing and many more, plus the huge success of university business and management degrees in which marketing constitutes a major or minor subject.
R. H. Thaler and C. R. Sunstein Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, New Haven and London, Yale University Press.
See http://www.bartleboglehegarty.com/#!/global/aboutus/history (accessed 2.3.2013).
My colleague Alan Bradshaw has written of the role of popular music in consumer culture. Here is his lucid review of The Sounds of Capitalism: Advertising, Music and the Conquest of Culture by T. D. Taylor, published by University of Chicago Press http://royalhollowaymarketing.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/review-of-sounds-ofcapitalism.html (accessed 2.3.2013).
There are lots of versions of Laundrette uploaded to YouTube; this is one of them http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=u06rDf-kUt0 (accessed 2.3.2013).
C. Hackley (2009) “Parallel Universes and Disciplinary Space: The Bifurcation of Managerialism and Social Science in Marketing Studies”, Journal of Marketing Management 25(7–8), 643–659.
I got interested in the tacit aspects of marketing practice quite a while ago, and tried to theorize it in this paper: C. Hackley (1999) “Tacit Knowledge and the Epistemology of Expertise in Strategic Marketing Management” European Journal of Marketing, Special Edition: Marketing Pedagogy, 33(7–8), 720–735.
This is called source credibility in advertising.
I’ve written an outline of the development of advertising theory in C. Hackley (2010) “Theorizing Advertising: Managerial, Scientific and Cultural Approaches,” chapter 6 in P. MacLaran, M. Saren, B. Stern, and M. Tadajewski (eds) The Sage Handbook of Marketing Theory, London, Sage, pp.89–
V. Packard (1957), The Hidden Persuaders, New York, Washington Square Press..
For academic perspectives on the politics of marketing science see, for example, M. Tadajewski (2008) “Incommensurable Paradigms, Cognitive Bias and the Politics of Marketing Theory,” Marketing Theory, September 8, 273–297. Tadajewski has also written in the same journal about the history of phrenology in marketing: “Character Analysis and Racism in Marketing Theory and Practice,” Marketing Theory, December 2012, 12(4), 485–508.
See http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/horsemeat-scandal (accessed 19.3.2013).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/19/breadline-britain-hungry-schoolchildren-breakfast ( accessed 19.3.2013).
http://www.tescolotus.net/index_E.php?lang=en (accessed 18.3.2013).
See http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/tesco-set-to-admit-defeat-in-dream-to-establish-american-chain-8571899.html (accessed 14.04.2013).
See S. Brown (2003) Free Gift Inside!! Forget the Customer–Develop Marketease, Chichester, Capstone.
See C. Hackley (2003) “How Divergent Beliefs Cause Account Team Conflict,” International Journal of Advertising, 22, 313–331. A pre-print of the paper is available at http://www.academia.edu/748052/How_divergent_beliefs_cause_account_team_conflict (accessed 18.3.2013).
C. Hackley (2003) “From Consumer Insight to Advertising Strategy: The Account Planner’s Integrative Role in Creative Advertising Development” Marketing Intelligence and Planning, 21(7), 446–452.
C. Hackley (2003) “Divergent Representational Practices in Advertising and Consumer Research: Some Thoughts on Integration,” Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, special issue on representation in consumer research, 6(3), 175–184.
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© 2013 Chris Hackley
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Hackley, C. (2013). Setting the Marketing Scene. In: Marketing in Context. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137297112_1
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