Ben Wooliscroft

Sustainable Market Orientation: A New Approach to Managing Marketing Strategy

Market orientation has been a foundation of corporate marketing strategy since the middle of the last century. There is a need for a broader conceptualization of market orientation and a new corporate marketing model is proposed: sustainable market orientation (SMO). Taking a macromarketing perspective, the new conceptualization proposes the use of three key sustainable development objectives in corporate marketing strategy; economic, social, and ecological sustainability. Corporate benefits from a SMO are discussed, a model for empirical testing is presented, and a range of research opportunities are discussed.

How international are the top academic journals? The case of marketing

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the level of international involvement in the editorial boards and content of the leading journals of the marketing discipline to investigate a reported bias against non‐US material.Design/methodology/approach – The research employed two approaches: editorial board and content analysis of ten leading marketing journals, and interviews with an expert panel of senior marketing academics.Findings – The top journals of the marketing journal were found to have low levels of international involvement, with high proportions of both US authors and data, and US membership of editorial boards. The editorial board analysis also revealed institutional links with journal boards, and a network of overlapping membership between the editorial boards. The expert panel provided divergent views on reasons for the USA dominance, but the board analysis seemed to best fit with the suggestion of networks of scholars who are naturally inclined to favor research that fits their wor...

A twenty-first century guide to Aldersonian marketing thought

Wroe Alderson a Life.- to Part II: Wroe Aldersons Theory of Market Behavior - Selected Writings.- Towards a Theory of Marketing.- The Analytical Framework for Marketing.- Survival and Adjustment in Organized Behavior Systems.- Survival and Growth of Systems.- The Power Principle.- Marketing efficiency and the principle of Postponement.- Competition for Differential Advantage.- Matching and Sorting: The Logic of Exchange.- to Functionalism.- Functionalism: Descriptive and Normative.- The Heterogeneous Market and the Organized Behavior System.- Information Flows in Heterogeneous Markets.- Transactions and Transvections.- Cooperation and conflict in marketing Channels.- to Part III: Wroe Alderson - Writings on Management Practice and Ethical Behavior.- Alderson, Sessions and the 1950s Manager.- A Basic Guide to Market Planning.- Researcher Finds a Void in Freud... Advertisers Urged to Follow Path of Rational Problem Solving Rather than of Instinctive Drives.- Ethics, Ideologies and Sanctions.- The American Economy and Christian Ethics.- Planning and Problem Solving in Marketing: A Book Review.- to Part IV: Aldersons Market Behavior Theory with its Links to Other Theories.- Alderson and Chamberlin.- Aldersons General Theory of Marketing: A Formalization.- Marketing Behaviour and Entrepreneurship: A Synthesis of Alderson and Austrian Economics.- An Alternative Paradigm for Marketing Theory.- Aldersons Transvection and Porters Value System.- to Part V: Original Contributions to This Publication.- The Wroe Alderson I Knew.- Wroe Alderson as Academic Entrepreneur: The Wharton Years.- Toward a General Theory of Marketing: Resource-Advantage Theory as an Extension of Aldersons Theory of Market Processes.- Placing Alderson and His Contributions to Marketing in Historical Perspective.- Wroe Aldersons Vision Renewed and Rehabilitated: Social Structures and Marketing Theories.- To Teach or Not to Teach Alderson? There is No Question.- List of Publications by Wroe Alderson.- A Select List of Authors Who Have Commented on Aldersonian Marketing Thought.

Brands Defined as Semiotic Marketing Systems

Brands are one of marketing’s main foci. But while the American Marketing Association’s official marketing definition continues to evolve, its brand definition has remained stagnant for nearly 80 years. This article argues that the AMA’s simplistic trademark conceptualization of brands is increasingly out of touch with marketing theory and practice. Integrating the consumer culture, marketing semiotics, and General Systems Theory literatures, we re-conceptualize brands as semiotic marketing systems. This follows marketing systems being core to macromarketing. It also obeys marketing systems needing to contemplate their meaning infrastructures given today’s progressively symbolic markets. The antecedents, operation and benefits of this new systems approach to brands are discussed. Brands are re-defined as complex multidimensional constructs with varying degrees of meaning, independence, co-creation and scope. Brands are semiotic marketing systems that generate value for direct and indirect participants, society, and the broader environment, through the exchange of co-created meaning.

Applying sustainability in national park management: balancing public and private interests using a sustainable market orientation model

The application of sustainable development (SD) in organisational strategy has been debated for over 20 years. There is much social and political support for sustainability, but very little empirical research into its value, particularly to public sector organisations. This paper reports on the first empirical research into the application of Sustainable Market Orientation (SMO), a conceptual merging of the principles of sustainable development and market orientation, to be applied in strategic management. The research context is the New Zealand Department of Conservations (DoC) administration of national park policy with particular focus on the Fiordland National Park. In-depth interviews were made with 33 DoC stakeholders, 9 internal and 24 external, including tourism businesses, local and national politicians and tourists and NGOs. The findings confirm the value of SMO in public service strategy management particularly in terms of balancing environmental, social and economic strategy, defining public service marketing parameters and ensuring the integration of short-term and long-term strategy. They also raised key issues in achieving conceptual balance in managing the environmental, social and economic orientations of SMO in protected areas using publicly owned resources and dilemmas inherent in reducing public sector funding for protected area conservation.

Authenticity: A macromarketing perspective

This investigation argues that authenticity is inherently a macromarketing concept that is linked to how marketers and consumers view themselves and their own status in society. We show that authenticity refers to the marketer’s marketplace condition (mindset) that can be best described as sincere concern for another. We argue that micromarketing as a general phenomenon is rooted in inauthenticity due to the fact that micromarketing practices represent (distressed, decomposed) overreaction to the marketers’ self-embraced narrow view of their own social status (as maximiser of self-interest, profit, growth) that is largely irrelevant – even contradictory – to the crucial goals of society.This investigation argues that authenticity is inherently a macromarketing concept that is linked to how marketers and consumers view themselves and their own status in society. We show that authenticity refers to the marketer’s marketplace condition (mindset) that can be best described as sincere concern for another. We argue that micromarketing as a general phenomenon is rooted in inauthenticity due to the fact that micromarketing practices represent (distressed, decomposed) overreaction to the marketers’ self-embraced narrow view of their own social status (as maximiser of self-interest, profit, growth) that is largely irrelevant – even contradictory – to the crucial goals of society.

Wroe Alderson a Life

Wroe Alderson was a scholar and a man of many talents. A Renaissance man in the truest sense of the term, he was a practitioner, scholar, theorist, philosopher, theologian, mentor, and good friend to many who knew him. Alderson rose from simple beginnings to be one of the leading marketing consultants in America, and the leading marketing theorist and father of modern marketing thought.

Assessing international journal impact: the case of marketing

Purpose – Potential ethnocentric biases in stated preference journal rankings are reviewed and revealed preference ranking methods are investigated. The aim of the paper is to identify an approach to ranking journals that minimises ethnocentric biases and better represents the international impact of research.Design/methodology/approach – Coverage of marketing journals in Ulrichs, EBSCO, SSCI, JCR, Scopus and Google Scholar is explored. Citing references to 20 articles are analysed to determine citation time lags and explore the content of SSCI, Scopus and Google Scholar. To further review the extent of citation coverage, h‐index scores are generated for ten marketing journals using data from SSCI, Scopus and Google Scholar. In total, 36 marketing journals are ranked using the g‐index and Google Scholar data and results are compared to ten published rankings.Findings – Stated preference ranking studies of marketing journals rely on US‐based respondents. The coverage of EBSCO, SSCI, JCR and Scopus databas...

Teaching the history of marketing theory

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reflect on an unusual course, a historically focused course on marketing theory taught to a range of students from their fourth year of study through to the doctoral level.Design/methodology/approach – The staff, who have taught the course since before 2000 to date, reflect on its purpose, the curriculum and the student experience.Findings – Studying the history of marketing theory has considerable value for able and engaged students, especially those wishing to proceed to masters or doctoral level study. Students who are exposed to the history of marketing thought are also likely to be better prepared for the business of the future.Originality/value – The originality of this paper is centered on the uniqueness of the course being taught; insights are provided into this unusual curriculum.

Human nature and the marketing concept

The marketing and sales orientations that are basic to our understanding of marketing history and also underlie distinctions about different company philosophies are considered in the light of the works of Hobbes and Rousseau. These philosophical treatises propose contrasting views of the essential nature of mankind that are similar to the implicit assumptions about buyer behaviour that underlie marketing and sales orientations. By extension, we propose that a case exists for the adoption of the marketing concept being considered as the equivalent to the Enlightenment for business practices. Renewed emphasis on the study of the mind in management theory adds weight to the need to make our assumptions about the nature of mankind explicit when we develop concepts and theories in marketing.