Letter from the President
- From the President
It is a great honour and privilege for me to take over as President from Lutz Hildebrandt. Lutz has served EMAC exceptionally well over the last 10 years, first as National Coordinator for Germany, then as conference chair for the Berlin conference (1999) and more recently as President. I would like to pass on my thanks, and those of all members, to Lutz for his far-sighted leadership. He remains on the Executive Committee as Past President to ensure that the new incumbent does not undo all the good things he has achieved!
EMAC has been at the heart of my professional and academic life for a quarter of a century now. The first conference I attended was at Gröningen (1979 – yes, I am that old) organised and chaired by Peter Leeflang (still active in EMAC and looking ten years younger than me!). Over that time, the EMAC community has given me two things I value above all others.
First, the annual conference has been a forum for discussing exciting new research in marketing. It is a great forum for colleagues to present their ideas and get constructive feedback, as well as to hear about what others are doing and what the latest trends are in research. But EMAC has also provided me the opportunity to network outside my own national marketing community. Over the years I have made many good friends through EMAC. Some of these I’ve gone on to work with (see the MC21 network at www.mc21.org), others it is just good to share a glass or two of wine with while discussing new developments or the football!
It is these two main elements of EMAC that I will be working with the Executive Committee to enhance for all members. The annual conference remains our main opportunity to share and test research ideas. Attendance is increasing rapidly (around 630 attended the excellent conference hosted in Murcia this May by José Luis Munuera and his colleagues). We need to ensure two things however: first that the academic excellence of the conference is maintained; and second that all members have the opportunity to attend so as to build, nurture and maintain their networks. These two can be contradictory objectives, as we have to restrict the presentations at conference to those jumping strict quality hurdles (only around 40% of papers were accepted after review for Murcia). And without a paper acceptance many colleagues cannot get funding from their institutions to attend and network. The solution seems to lie in offering poster sessions and other sessions/events where work that is more developmental in nature can be presented. But the conference is not the only way in which we can share and test ideas. The new teaching portal, developed by Manfred Krafft, offers an excellent facility for sharing teaching ideas and materials.
Opportunities for networking extend beyond EMAC. In October Veronica Wong, Suzanne Beckmann and Gérard Hermet are planning a joint EMAC/ESOMAR symposium to facilitate networking with marketing research professionals, while the Milan conference next May will see a special one day colloquium in conjunction with colleagues from ‘down under’ in ANZMAC. It is our intention to pursue other possibilities for joint symposia and colloquia over the next few years.
So, my personal slogan for EMAC would be ‘enhancing academic excellence through networking’. I’m looking forward to serving you all as President over the next two years. Please let me have your own ideas and suggestions as to how we can together make EMAC an even more productive academy for all its members.
Graham Hooley (g.j.hooley@aston.ac.uk) June 2004
Letter from the Conference Chair 2004
- From the Conference Chair 2004
Dear Colleagues,
The 33rd EMAC Conference (www.emac2004.org) took place at Murcia (Spain) during the third week of last May. The responsibility of organizing such an exciting event has been held by the University of Murcia.
As a recognized international forum for both networking and learning, every University that take care of an EMAC Conference tries to do its best. Attendees enjoyed the academic atmosphere, papers, and special sessions. In addition, they were offered excellent meals and could get pleasure from our cultural insights.
Perhaps some figures can provide some insights about the dimension and course of the Conference. The Conference aroused great interest among researchers in marketing, and 860 papers were received. After an initial screening, 761 papers were sent for review. Finally, 336 papers were accepted as Papers and 35 as Posters.
Considering our prior Conference experiences, and the work and knowledge accumulated and the Organizing Committee did its best in order to innovate and to add value to our colleagues. A communication platform was specially designed to manage the entire interface: review process, conference information, registration, travel information and other topics. As an international forum, an effort was made to guarantee the quality of the papers. Thus, for every track, both Chair and Co-Chair coordinated and controlled the whole process. Some improvements were made on the logistics, lowering even the conference fee, and extending the scholarships to new countries.
However, the Conference success has been possible due to the whole marketing academic community. This letter recalls the great effort made by the (anonymous) reviewers to have every paper finished on time. A total of 445 researchers participated coming from North America (159), Europe (119) and Australia (16). They were critical for the Conference. Moreover, we would like to express thanks to all the authors who submitted their works to the Conference. Their effort and eagerness have fed the Conference. Finally, publishers and sponsors have also contributed to this conference and therefore should be very much acknowledged.
We hope that the 630 attendees from all five continents have learned and enjoyed from their participation in Murcia. Thanks to all of you!
José Luis Munuera
Chairperson - EMAC 2004 - EMAC 2004 Photos & Statistics
Please be informed that a new section has been added to the conference website, where you will find pictures of the EMAC 2004 conference (the Get Together, the Casino Dinner, the Gala Dinner, and so on) as well as some statistics with interesting numbers (number of papers and poster presented by countries, reviewers by country,...) and the final participants' list.
If you check the "News" section you will find all the media coverage of the conference. And last but not least, the abstracts of the papers presented are available in the "Conference Program" section.
A view on EMAC 2004 by the VP Conferences and a participant
- A report on the highlights of the EMAC conference 2004
The 33rd EMAC Conference, May 18-21st 2004, Murcia
(Veronica Wong and Nick Lee, Aston Business School, Birmingham, UK)
Here are two survivors to report on the highlights of the main conference event.
First, a summary from VeronicaA conference to remember……………..
The 33rd EMAC Annual Conference (18-21 May 2004), hosted by the University of Murcia, in Spain, and held at the city’s Convention Centre, has been a spectacular success. There is no doubt that this is one of the best EMAC conferences that I have attended.
The event has broken a number of records in EMAC’s long conference history. Living firmly up to its theme, “Worldwide Marketing?”, this year’s conference boasts a record number of 860 paper submissions. An acceptance rate of 43% yielded a total of 371 presentations, including 336 papers and 35 posters, written by contributors from 35 countries. A record number of 630 participants attended the conference.
For the first time EMAC introduced a Track Chair and Co-Chair system for the scientific management of the review process, a major innovation which has been successfully implemented by this year’s conference organiser. The rigorous double-blind review process alone had involved the efforts of some 36 international scholars, acting as Chairs and Co-chairs and more than 400 reviewers from 30 countries.
Other features that deserve a mention include, not three, not four, but five, Special Sessions: Marketing Research and Management Practice (chaired by John Roberts); Innovation and Value Creation in Marketing (chaired by Donald Lehmann); Models and Measurement (Peter Leeflang); Consumer Behaviour (Rik Pieters) and International Marketing (Adamantios Diamantopoulos). Thanks to the efforts of Gilles Laurent and Jose Luis Munuera!. In addition, a good time was had by those who got to ‘Meet Journal Editors’ , Hubert Gatignon (IJRM), Dick Wittink (JMR) and Dawn Iacobucci (JCR). Last, but not least, the discussions held in the panel session, ‘Marketing Education in European Business Schools’, were instructive, while bringing together the views of deans from several Schools – Hubert Gatignon (INSEAD), Luis Renart (IESE), Chiara Mauri (Bocconi School of Management) and Robin Wensley (Warwick Business School).
While on the subject of innovations introduced in the 2004 EMAC Conference, we must acknowledge the thoughtful gesture of the award of six scholarships to papers from the new EU member countries (Cyprus, Estonia and Hungary) and one scholarship to a research group from a “far away University” (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil). These scholarships, in a way, live up to the 2004 Conference theme of worldwide marketing, meaning to act as a way to disseminate worldwide marketing inside the EU and other closed regions like Latin America.
As in previous years, an award is granted to recognise excellent work based on a doctoral thesis. This year, guided by the evaluations and comments of Track Chairs and Co-Chairs and reviewers, six papers were shortlisted and presented for evaluation by an experts’ Panel comprising José L. Munuera (Chair of EMAC 2004 Conference), Hubert Gatignon (Editor, IJRM), Gilles Laurent (VP Publications) and myself (VP Conferences). The ‘Best Paper of the Conference based on a Doctoral Thesis’ was awarded to Amina Ait El Houssi, Kaj Morel and Erik Jan Hultink (all from Delft University of Technology) for their paper “Analogical Learning of New Product Benefits: Between-Domain Analogies and Within-Domain Analogies”. In addition, Dr. Nils Andres, from the Brands Science Institute, the official sponsor of the award, presented a cheque of 1500 euros to the winners at the Gala dinner. Congratulations, once again, to the authors.
On behalf of EMAC and the International Journal of Research in Marketing, Gilles Laurent also announced the winners and the honorable mentions of the 2003 IJRM Best Paper Award at the Gala dinner. The winners of the Award for the best article published in IJRM were Prasad Ashutosh, Mahajan Vijay and Bronnenberg Bart for their article “Advertising versus pay-per-view in electronic media”, IJRM 20 (1), 13-30. The honorable mention went to: Shankar Venkatesh, Smith Amy K. and Rangaswamy Arvind for their article “Customer satisfaction and loyalty in online and offline environments”, IJRM 20 (2), 153-175. Many congratulations to these colleagues!The winning article was selected on the basis of two rounds of voting by the members of the editorial board followed by an evaluation of the two papers receiving the most votes in the second round by the members of the selection committee, consisting of Naufel Vilcassim (Chair, London Business School, UK), Hans Baumgartner (The Pennsylvania State University, USA), Amitava Chattopadhyay (INSEAD, F), Pradeep Chintagunta (University of Chicago, USA).
The social side?Over to Nick, who has this to say:
On the social side of things, the conference organisers and delegates – and the good people of Murcia itself it must be said – spared no effort in living up to the words of a famous drummer: “have a good time, all the time”. There were a number of unforgettable evenings and events, both formally organised by the conference and rather more informally ‘organised’ by various groups of delegates. In particular I don’t think I will ever forget the huge and impressive display of fireworks on the evening of the conference dinner, or at least I’ll never forget the sounds since I was cowering under the tables at the time. But I am assured the visuals more than lived up to the sounds.
The functions themselves were never less than fantastic, whether it be the amazing ceiling of the venue for Wednesday’s dinner, or the wonderful food of the Gala Dinner itself. Apparently the wine and beer were great as well, but of course I couldn’t possibly comment. The Gala Dinner was topped off with a raucous celebratory party afterwards, where the Spanish predilection for pouring huge measures of spirits was fully indulged by most. Although perhaps a warning may have been helpful to a number of us!
Murcia itself proved to be a sensational venue for a conference, particularly to the shoe shoppers amongst us. The sight of one delegate loaded down with six bags of shoes on return from a sneaky shopping trip will stay long in the memory. The city’s bars and clubs also proved more than accommodating, although a recalibration of one’s sense of timing was clearly necessary after being greeted with laughter from a doorman at 4.30am on Saturday morning: “You’re a bit early!” Of course, he was proved right, and when at 6.30am nobody appeared to be going home except us foreigners he had the last as well as the first laugh.
So overall, both academically and socially EMAC 2004 can be pronounced a resounding success, and we must congratulate the organising party for their fine and committed efforts. However, after looking high and low around the entire city, I never did find that beach…
Report on the Doctoral Colloquium 2004
- Report on the Doctoral Colloquium 2004 Submitted by Luk Warlop
At this year’s EMAC Doctoral Colloquium, which was held in Murcia immediately prior to the EMAC Conference 2004, 27 students presented and discussed their dissertation research with leading academics in the field of marketing and fellow doctoral students. The competition was particularly tough as 90 applications had been received.
Throughout the colloquium, which took place from Sunday, May 16 until Tuesday, May 18, 2004, the students presented interesting research proposals, came up with lots of ideas, and were eager to discuss and to socialize.
Based on the traditional division of the field in the major academic journals, three tracks were running parallel:
- MARKETING MANAGEMENT
- MARKETING MODELLING
- CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR
Our sincere thanks go to the faculty for their valuable time and cooperation in this colloquium:
Karen Gedenk (Frankfurt University)
Koen Pauwels (Darthmouth University)
Arvind Rangaswamy (Penn State University)
Mark Ritson (London Business School)
Salvador Ruiz (University of Murcia)
Stefan Stremersch (Erasmus University)
Gerrit van Bruggen (Erasmus University)
Harald van Heerde (Tilburg University)
Stijn van Osselaer (Erasmus University)
Luk Warlop (KULeuven)Many thanks also to Arvind Rangawasmy (Penn State University) and Hubert Gatignon (INSEAD) who both gave a much appreciated plenary lecture.
After the closing speech of Graham Hooley, who replaced the EMAC President, Lutz Hildebrandt, a reception was organised with the EMAC Fellows.
EMAC Fellows Column
- Have you learned anything? - How excellent teaching and excellent research are related - By John Saunders
Scott of the anarchic
One delights of the EMAC annual is conference combating with Scott Armstrong on the occasional years when this great and controversial scholar has a paper accepted. This year the reviewers got it right, and Scott was there to fire off his challenges.Scott's joyful challenges must have been a late development; otherwise, his parents would have nailed his head to the floor. This years favourite quip was: "Have you learned anything?" This led to one little exchange about how concern for teaching quality damages research quality and how the best researchers are awkward people. Certainly, some excellent researchers tap into a reservoir of selfishness and arrogance, but others retain the common touch. Other generous souls find reward in helping others and are excellent teachers. Unwilling to accept the idea that there is a positive link between excellent teaching and research, Scott requested a paper. Well Scott, here it is!
Hurray Hooley or wrong about Wong?
As the head of a business school, I have to admit that it would make life simple if teaching quality and research quality were negatively correlated. Unfortunately, they are not. Even worse, the excellent teacher-researchers are often excellent managers and ambassadors for the business schools. Because they both work in my Business School, I can give two examples two such paragons: Graham Hooley, EMAC's new President, and Veronica Wong, EMAC's Vice-President (Conferences). Both achieve excellent rating for their postgraduate teaching, have developed numerous young academics, and are accomplished leaders. Veronica leads Aston's marketing group and Graham is Aston University's Pro-Vice Chancellor. Incidentally, both Veronica and Graham were part of the late Peter Doyle's team at Bradford where he was an outstanding example of an excellent teacher, researcher, academic innovation, entrepreneurship and getting really rich!Are the two EMAC executives examples of a pattern or aberrations? I use three sets of secondary data to explore the issue central to Scott's concern: the relationship between teaching and research. The first looks at individuals using information from a single business school. The second is published data on the teaching and research quality of UK business schools and the third set compares the overall teaching quality and research quality of UK universities. In all cases, teaching and research quality are independently measured.
Person by person
Like many others, Aston Business School measures the teaching and research performance of all staff annually. The process is taken very seriously since it informs a substantial Performance Related Pay system, sets the funding level of Subject Groups, individual teaching loads and promotion prospects. Teaching quality is measured by the Quality Unit using information from student feedback, Programme Directors, other colleagues across the school and the leaders of Subject Groups. The measure is a four-point scale ranging from zero to three where zero is unsatisfactory and four is outstanding.A two by two cross tabulation of high scores (>2) for teaching and research cross-tabulated against the low scores shows a pattern (Table 1).
Table 1: Individual teaching and research ratings compared
Research
Teaching quality
Quality
Lower
Higher
Higher
13
29
Lower
17
17
The relationship is not overpowering (χ2 = 2.85 significant at 0.1 level) but it does suggest that the people with lower research output have an even chance of being a top rated teacher. The ratio for top researchers is 2 to 1 in favour of them also being top teachers.Although this evidence does support the idea that excellence in teaching is correlated with excellence in research, the data is not in the public domain so is hard to check. That is not the case for the school-by-school and university-by-university analyses that follow since both use published information.
Business school by business school
The research quality and teaching quality of UK business schools is compared using data from two independent exercises conducted by the UK's Higher Education Funding Councils. Although each of the four countries in the United Kingdom have their own funding councils, they distribute university funds differently, until recently they all use the same method to assess the teaching quality and research quality of all university departments.The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) periodically reviews the research output of all University departments at the time. Business and Management covers most of all business schools' output although there is a separate panel for Accounting and Finance. The RAE 2001 comprised eleven academics and one practitioner that covered all disciplines who conduct a paper based exercise. The overall grading they gave to departments considered four publications chosen by each academic in a school, research grants obtained, PhD programmes, research strategy and other measures of esteem. The original ratings use a seven-point scale that shows signs of compromises and adjustments: 1, 2, 3a, 3b, 4, 5, 5*. At one extreme 50 percent of the output of the top 5* rated schools is rated of international standing whereas 1 rated schools have minimal output of national standing.
The RAE has real financial teeth. The Government aims to concentrate research funding in a few top Universities so only the minority of schools rated 5 or 5* receive significant research funding.
Until recently, Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) assessed the teaching quality of university departments over a long cycle of years. The QAA's methods changed over time although they consistently used a panel of assessors in a similar fashion to EQUIS. However, here EQUISfs panel is usually very senior academics that rely on their experience to guide them; QAA assessors are often middle ranking academics who QAA train for the exercise. AACSB International accreditations are a hybrid that uses trained senior academics.
The QAA results have never had the direct financial implications of the RAE but the detailed results are widely published effect rankings in the UK. In its original for the QAA in England, Wales and Northern Ireland rated departments as Excellent, Satisfactory or Not Satisfactory, although there were very few of the latter. Scotland added a Most Satisfactory category. More recently, results appeared using six criteria that could award a maximum of 24 points. It is generally accepted that Excellent in the old system corresponds to 22+ points in the new system.
To see if research and teaching quality are related we compare the QAA results of the Internationally RAE rated school (5 or 5*) with those of the schools rated from 1 to 4 (Table 2)
Table 2: The Research Quality and Teaching Quality of UK Business Schools
Research Quality
Teaching Quality: QAA score
Not International Standing:
RAE 1, 2, 3a, 3b or 4
International Standing: RAE 5 or 5*
Excellent or 22+
28
12
Satisfactory or < 22
41
4
ƒÔ2 = 6.2 significant at 0.05 level
Eyeballing the table suggests that excellent teaching quality occurs more frequently in research excellent schools than in those that are not. A more detailed breakdown of RAE and QAA scores indicate an interesting pattern. There are only three top (5*) rated schools but all have excellent QAA scores. In contrast double jeopardy occurs for 4 rated schools who just miss out on generous RAE funding and have a lower proportion (7 out of 21) QAA excellent scores than any other research category.
University by university
Britain's Higher Education Funding Councils do not publish league tables or ranking but do publish a mine of performance indicators for those that want to. One of the most respected institutions that does so is The Times who in one week each year publish their results in the newspaper as well as their sister publications The Times Higher Education Supplement and The Times Good University Guide. Among lots of other manipulations, The Times aggregates the teaching scores and research across universities. The number of items is actually higher than the number of business schools in the UK because a few universities still do not have business schools (Figure 1).
Figure 1
The plot looks conclusive and represents data with a correlation coefficient of 0.675 (significant at 0.01 level). Regressing the RAE scores on those for the QAA gives:
QAA = -22.99 + 1.26 * RAE (r2 = 0.46)
(-7.67) (9.02)
.
with both t-statistics significant at a 0.001 level. These suggest that for every 1 point increase on the research quality score, expect a 1.26 increase in the teaching quality score.Conclusion
I am tempted to end with a one line conclusion: "Scott is wrong" but I am not one to gloat. All the results suggest that teaching quality and research quality are positively related at an individual, business school and university level. Why should this be so since spending time on research must reduce the time spent on teaching? There are several reasons. Firstly, excellent researchers are likely to be better informed than those who are not since publishing at the top-level forces people to be up to date and be clear thinkers. Secondly, both teaching and research excellence are driven by people with a desire to excel and, thirdly, both teaching and research are helped by overall ability. Certainly the leading research schools and universities can attract excellent staff who, given the motivation can turn themselves to the task in hand.The UK environment may have particular features that make teaching and research quality related in a way that they are not elsewhere. As mentioned earlier, the RAE rewards excellent research at a school and university level. In the top rated research schools almost half the salary is paid directly for research, meaning that researchers in the top schools need to teach less to cover their salary than do people in teaching dominated business schools. In many markets the top research schools also have the ability to charge higher fees so, again, are better resourced. Finally, the positive correlation between teaching and research might exist in the UK because both are measured and published widely. At the individual level within Aston, the Performance Related Pay scheme rewards teaching and research quality equally and a highly respected Director of Research and a Director of Quality champion the areas. At the business school and university levels, the funding council promotes both ideals and uses independent dedicated mechanisms to do so.
As a marketer, I am relieved teaching quality and research quality can abide side by side since, in the long term, it is hard to champion quality in bits. The relationship also closes a virtues cycle that can be a foundation for a school's strategy. An excellent research reputation helps attract excellent researcher and students; the excellent students rightfully demand excellent teaching; the combination of excellent teaching and researcher enhances an excellent reputation and attracts more students who are willing to pay higher fees for the experience; the higher fees pay the resources to support excellent research...
Scott, have you learned anything?
John SaundersEMAC Fellow
Head of Aston Business School1. The process and results of the exercise are at http://www.hero.ac.uk/rae/
2. The QAA process and all its reports are at http://www.qaa.ac.uk/
3. Many of the performance indicators are at http://www.hefce.ac.uk/learning/PerfInd/ although other are at other parts of HEFCE's web site.
4. Andrew Hindmarsh, Bernard Kingston, John O'Leary (Eds), The "Times" Good University Guide 2005, The Times: London, 2004 - Recency by Michael J. Baker
One of my publishers tells me that it is now necessary to bring out a revised edition of a mainstream marketing textbook every three years. If one considers the incidence of significant changes in theory and practice then , clearly, this cannot be the cause and one is left to conclude that the only compelling reason is “recency”. The book is less than three years old, so it must be up-to-date! This phenomenon is particularly marked in academic journals, accompanied by a tendency to recite anything and everything that might be remotely connected to the subject of inquiry to the point that soon the number of pages given to the references will exceed those devoted to the text itself. Such a proclivity is akin to the manner in which self-made men of limited education establish extensive libraries in which the primary criteria are quantity - buying books by the yard - and appearance - fine bindings and co-ordinated colours. “Fine feathers make a fine birds”.
In English Proverbs Explained (Pan Books, 1967) Ronald Widout and Clifford Whitting observed that: “the chaffinch is much more colourful and attractive than a house sparrow, yet they are of the same family; they are both finches, and without their feathers they would be identical in appearance”. The message is that while appearances may influence our first impression they should not encourage us to draw erroneous conclusions, e.g that chaffinches are radically different from house sparrows. Or, to quote another proverb, “Beauty is but skin deep” - a pleasing appearance may hide an ugly nature, or complete ignorance of the content of the library.
So is this polemic (“a verbal attack on a belief or opinion”) prompted by advanced years, a tendency to live in the past, and ignorance of current thinking and ideas? Possibly, but I hope not. As an editor, and member of numerous editorial boards, I am invited to read too many modern articles to be much out of date. My concern is that what I have termed “research myopia” leads younger scholars to overlook or ignore all the seminal contributions of earlier generations on which the foundations of modern marketing thought are built. In doing so they lose sight of the knowledge and insight accumulated over many years in other social sciences like economics, psychology and sociology which the marketing discipline seeks to integrate into a holistic explanation and interpretation of human consumption and exchange behaviour.
When Newton said “If I can see further it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants” he was acknowledging his debt to all the scholars who had preceded him. But Newton,1642-1727 (not very recent) was propounding completely new theories that represented a major breakthrough in our understanding. In addition to discovering the binomial theorem, differential and integrated calculus and that white light is composed of many colours, he also developed the three standard laws of motion and the universal law of gravitation. Unless and until these propositions/theories are falsiified (the central tenet of positivism) physicists and others will continue to accept their validity and build upon the insight they provide. Thus science proceeds by a process of accumulation, most of which is incremental, until the next major discontinuity or breakthrough occurs, initiating a new cycle of evolutionary refinement.
But as Luecke (1993) pointed out in his book, Scuttle your ships before advancing, social scientists seem to be unwilling (unable) to agree a common start point representing what we believe we know so that we may advance from a well-established base to explore what we don’t know. As a result the social sciences appeared to be doomed, like the Marie Celeste, to drift aimlessly, continually revisiting the same issues and reinventing themselves.
What is needed is a better appreciation of the past and the origins of our discipline. While it may be asking too much to agree laws and axioms of the kind that underpin the physical sciences, it should not be beyond our ability to develop what in my time at Harvard Business School in the late Sixties we called CUGs - currently useful generalisations. Generalisation is usually seen as the third step in the creation of knowledge following observation and classification. While it may lack the precision and authority of an axiom, law or principle it is usually sufficient to be used as a basis for decision-making and action. All the more so if it is current and useful. By the same token, if it ceases to be useful, or is overtaken by an improved and more up-to-date version, rejecting a CUG does not call for the same burden of proof as does the falsification of a law.
Accordingly, we should not automatically discard an argument or piece of research because its foundations are 10, 20, 30 years old or more. What we need to establish is whether more recent work has improved or invalidated the original authority and, if so, how. Further, unless we can come up with a convincing rejection of the earlier work, then we should restate its value and importance if for no other reason than that the original articulation of an insight or idea is often simpler and clearer than later versions of it. (If you look at papers in the Journal of Marketing in the 1950s and 60s you’ll find most are short and contained few if any references!) Also, incrementalism, without reference back to the original, can result, over time, in a radical distortion and misrepresentation of what the original authority actually said. If you really want to know what Wendell Smith said about differentiation and market segmentation as alternative strategies you would be better advised to read his article in the Journal of Marketing, July 1956 (which contains no references at all) than Blomquist’s (2004) version based on Smith (2003) and Jones (2002) not to mention Uncle Tom Cobleigh (2001).
Being aware of the past does not require one to live in it. But as Santayana observed “He who is unaware of history is bound to repeat it”. To avoid this, revisit the older literature of marketing - it only dates back a century or so. Equally, important, review the state-of-the-art, i.e. as represented by authoritative introductory textbooks in the cognate disciplines synthesised by marketing. You might be very surprised by how much you will learn.
Michael J Baker June 2004