Seven Reasons Why Marketing Practitioners Should Ignore Marketing Academic Research

Australasian Marketing Journal, 2004 by November, Peter

Abstract

This article seeks to explain why marketing practitioners should continue to ignore marketing academic research. The reasons are organized into seven categories: customers, structure, causality, reductionism, precision, generalisations and replication. Evidence is drawn mostly from award winning articles. In the short term, the author advocates removing claims of usefulness from academic work, celebrating its academic value and maintaining the gap between academics and practitioners. In the long term, he anticipates the development of new approaches to academic work that might bridge the academic/practitioner gap.

Keywords: Academic/practitioner gap, Criticism of academic research

1. Introduction

Many disciplines that exist as professional practice and as university subjects face questions about the relevance of academic research to practice at some time in their development. In management, Porter and McKibbon (1988), Abrahamson (1996), Mowday (1997), and Rynes, Bartunek and Daft (2001) discuss the so-called gap between academic research and management practice. Anderson (1998) describes the views of managers on academic research in organizational behaviour as unreadable, banal and inconsequential. Bolton and Stoicis (2003) discuss what they call 'the disconnect' between academic research and practice in the field of public administration. Thomas (1994) in social work and Buckley (1998) in business administration both write about the questionable utility of scholarly research to practitioners in their respective disciplines. Senge (1988, p.49) says that a "gap has been observed between the practice and teaching of management accounting". Lee, Koh, Yen and Tang (2002) report on the gap between academics and professionals in information systems and Ho (2000, p. 6) states that:

"Much academic research on information technology, systems, and management has been branded by practitioners in business as unusable, irrelevant, and unreadable."

Finally, Wilkerson (1999, p. 599) sums up the position across business disciplines:

"Is academic research in business management disciplines readily related to workplace issues and practical management skills? And is it typically conveyed in terms familiar to practitioners. Generally, the answer to both would seem to be no."

It should come as no surprise that this debate has also surfaced in marketing. For example, Westing (1977, p. 3), amongst other criticisms, summed up the efforts of marketing scientists as "the mountain has labored and brought forth a mouse". Maiken (1979, p. 58), a thoughtful practitioner commenting on his attempt to keep in touch with academic work, wrote:

"The more I read in the Journal of Marketing, or tried to read in the Journal of Marketing Research, the more I realized that what was meaningful to the marketing academician in terms of tools or techniques to solve my marketing problems, had little or no application in the marketplace."

Armstrong (1991) showed that practitioners had a poor knowledge of the findings of consumer research. Their guesses or predictions about findings published in the Journal of Consumer Research were less than chance. (Surprisingly, the guesses or predictions of academics were worse than practitioners.) After a major assessment of the effectiveness of academic research, Myers, Massy and Greyser (1980) concluded that academic marketing research had relatively little impact on improving marketing management practice. Gautier (2002), in reviewing the 270 papers presented at an Australasian conference with the title 'Bridging Marketing Theory and Practice', could find little of practical relevance in the few papers she could actually understand. And finally, Shelby Hunt (2002, p. 305) wrote:

"Throughout its 100-plus year history, one of the most recurring themes has been that there is a 'gap Or 'divide ' between marketing academe and marketing practice. As evidence, critics point out (among other things) that marketing practitioners neither subscribe to nor read academic marketing journals."

The purpose of this article is to put forward reasons why marketing practitioners should not read academic journals and should not attend academic conferences: why, for the most part, they should ignore our work.

But first some words of warning. My purpose is not to argue that academic research in marketing should be irrelevant to practitioners. Myers (1979, p. 62) states that:

"Marketing academicians should recognize that the overall importance of research and knowledge development in this field, over the short-run or long-run, is to improve marketing practice and decision-making, and in general, to advance the state of knowledge useful to the profession."

I am not disagreeing with Myers although it may look as though I am. I am arguing that in its present state, academic research in marketing should be ignored by marketing practitioners.

Should we try to make it more relevant? Is it less relevant today than in the past? Is it less relevant to our practitioners than other academic disciplines are to theirs? These are interesting questions. But my focus is on seeking the reasons why practitioners who ignore academic work in marketing are doing the right thing at this point in time. Whether we should do anything about this or, indeed, if it is possible to do anything about this, are questions that others might like to tackle.