Marketing science: where's the beef? - failures in efforts to establish the scientific aspect of marketing theory - includes bibliography

Business Horizons, Jan-Feb, 1994 by L. McTier Anderson

Magazine readership statistics are also suspect. For example, Queenan (1988) revealed that Mediamark Research (MRI) and Simmons Market Research Bureau, the two major readership research firms, differed by 9 million readers in one estimate of Better Homes and Gardens readers. Similarly, Lipman (1987) reported a 13.4 million difference in Reader's Digest readers. The differences are methodological; publishers say it is difficult to determine which firm's figures are most accurate. Still, advertisers annually use readership measurements to decide where to spend billions of dollars. A Time Inc. study in the mid-1980s dramatically illustrated the magnitude of the measurement problem. In that study, researchers identified 13.1 million people who claimed to read four magazines that were either fictitious or defunct (Lipman 1987). Recent debates over the validity of using "pass alongs" in readership statistics attack the very foundation of the measurement process! Using "pass alongs," for example, Mediamark Research recently reported a "total audience" of 35.2 million adult readers for People magazine. That audience dwarfs the magazine's primary readers as measured by its circulation of only 3.3 million (Reilly 1992).

American marketers can learn much from the Japanese about research. Given the propensity of the Japanese to copy and enhance American ideas, it is noteworthy that they have, for the most part, scorned American marketing research techniques. Unlike Americans, who favor large-scale, "scientific" surveys of potential consumers, the Japanese have effectively used a more hands-on, qualitative research methodology that American academics and researchers disdain. Sony chairman Akio Morita wisely rejected American-style research results that predicted the Walkman would fail (Johansson and Nonaka 1987).

Similarly, Peter Drucker (1990) noted that the fax machine, which is "American in invention, technology, design, and development," was not put on the market by Americans because market research convinced them there was no demand for "such a gadget." The Japanese, on the other hand, focused not on the machine but on the market for "what it does," scoring a major marketing success. America leads the world in scientific discoveries and Nobel laureates but has had great difficulty turning basic inventions into commercially successful products, an endeavor in which marketing must be the driving force.

Problems in Advertising

Marketers' track records in defining and creating "effective" advertisements are equally problematic. David Ogilvy, the father of modern advertising and author of the 1962 classic, Confessions of an Advertising Man, calls advertising today "pretentious and incomprehensible nonsense" (Lipman 1991).

The fact that 1991 was the worst year for the advertising business in half a century adds credibility to Ogilvy's assessment: "Ad spending decreased for the first time in 30 years in 1991, and the dip, of 1.7 percent, was the deepest since World War II" (Lipman 1992b). That 17 of the nation's 20 largest food and food products advertisers reduced their advertising budgets in 1991 provides further strong evidence that advertisers are fed up with advertising's questionable effectiveness (Lipman 1992a). Seven of those 17--H.J. Heinz (43 percent), RJR Nabisco (34 percent), Ralston Purina (32.2 percent), American Home Products (24.4 percent), Procter & Gamble (21.1 percent), CPC International (21.3 percent), and Quaker Oats (20.6 percent)--made cuts of more than 20 percent.