Abstract
Welcoming Roger Layton's call for marketing to be recognised as a social science, this commentary suggests marketers will need to build a stronger body of marketing theory in order to achieve this goal. Both inter-disciplinary and intra-disciplinary insights will play a significant role, as well as challenging the managerial emphasis of our discipline.
I definitely believe that marketing should be treated as a social science and, indeed, in my own work (on consumer culture) this is the approach I adopt: looking at human society and social relationships through the lens of markets and marketing. In my opinion, this socio-cultural focus means that a social scientific label best describes the nature of my research, and so I welcome Roger Layton's ambition for this to be extended to the marketing discipline more generally.
There are certainly other well-recognised social science disciplines that are interested in markets and consumption, sociology and anthropology being two I know well. Indeed, from the 1980s onwards, theories from these specific disciplines have helped question much taken-for-granted marketing thought rooted in economics and the concept of rational economic man, revealing markets to be webs of socially-connected beings who often act emotionally and unpredictably (Belk, 1995). Many such theories inform the work undertaken in consumer culture theory research, including studies on market system dynamics that view markets as complex social systems with multiple actors and institutions that actively shape, and are shaped by, markets (see Giesler and Fischer, 2016). Importantly, I believe that those of us within marketing departments are often better placed than our sociological and anthropological colleagues to bring a more nuanced approach to identifying and understanding key marketplace actors and the intricate relationships between them.
Crucially, this means using interdisciplinary insights to build
To overcome this perceived limitation to our discipline means acknowledging other significant constituents apart from marketing managers i.e., society and consumers, constituents who are equally, if not more, important (as macromarketers have long recognised). Part of the problem, however, in re-positioning marketing as a more broadly focused social science discipline is the term itself. ‘Marketing’ immediately locates it as a particular business function. The reduction in meaning that ensues is difficult to overcome without changing the name altogether. I propose a refocus on the core phenomenon rather than the more recent managerial activity, on markets rather than marketing. Other alternative names that spring to mind and that would immediately broaden our discipline's outlook are Markets and Market Actors or, more simply, Market Studies. There is already a subfield of marketing known as Constructivist Market Studies (see Harrison and Kjellberg, 2016) that draws on interdisciplinary perspectives to theorise the shaping of markets and uses the term to distance itself from the technical side of marketing.
This brings me to another aspect of Roger Layton's paper that I would like to comment on, the continuing fragmentation of the marketing discipline. We now have a broad range of subfields (and subfields within subfields!) as he rightly highlights, and these continue to grow. The neoliberalisation of academia with its concomitant performance measures and precarious employment contracts means that academics are becoming more strategic in their production of knowledge. There is a pronounced trend towards building academic brands, often accompanied by relevant journals, conferences and other trappings of an academic subfield (Cova et al., 2009).Consequently, there is increased risk of remaining in our individual academic silos without realising what is going on, not only in other disciplines, but also in our own, broader field of marketing. I suggest we challenge and break down this silo mentality through the sharing of theory and adopting more collaborative approaches across the marketing discipline as well as beyond it.
It seems to me that what we require to solve some of the problems Roger foregrounds – drug epidemics, migrant camps, sustainable communities and so forth – is to take a more holistic approach whereby various perspectives in marketing contribute their unique insights. For example, in the case of the drug epidemic, we need both macro and micro perspectives. Macro-level insights will give us the big picture in relation to socio-economic factors that have given rise to the problem and the market systems that have facilitated it (drug supply networks, etc.). Understanding more micro-level, meaning-making, processes between addicts, dealers and their wider social circles will help to understand why the epidemic has occurred at this time in this place. Neither level on its own brings complete understanding. And, in relation to this hypothetical case, critical theoretical perspectives (to expose power relations) can also be imagined alongside more managerial perspectives (to implement a social marketing programme).
Thus we need more intra-disciplinary emphasis as well as inter-disciplinary impetus to establish marketing as a social science. The current (neoliberal) academic climate militates against this because it rewards self-interest and quick results. As Martin Parker, Professor of Organisation Studies, Leicester University, UK highlights in a recent article in the Guardian newspaper (Parker, 2016), business schools are the cash cows of the contemporary university and their growth has justified the marketisation of the university system. Rather than the narrow conception of business schools teaching capitalism, he argues they should teach about organisations and “how human beings come together for collective benefit, or not”. There are many different ways of organising and capitalism is but one. Similarly there are many different exchange systems of which market capitalism is but one. Martin Parker asks us to imagine a biology department that only teaches about animals with four legs and omits everything else. Like Roger Layton, he is urging for a broader remit to management studies that moves away from “market managerialism.” I too echo this in my appeal for marketers to recognise a broader constituency than just managerial perspectives. This will be the only way we can move forward as a respected social science discipline. Here I must stress that this view does not exclude managerial voices either, but rather it acknowledges that society and consumers are equally privileged constituents.
In conclusion, I agree very much with Roger Layton that the marketing discipline is likely to continue to fragment unless we can think of a more unifying umbrella to encompass the many different parts and I support his ambitious vision. Although I realise that a name change is probably a utopian dream, I think we could make a start with more dialogue between our different parts, dialogue that opens up collaborations around markets and market actors broadly conceived.