Commentary on “developing successful theories in marketing: insights from resource-advantage theory”

Abstract

Marketing has long been criticized for lacking a unifyingtheory and for relying too strongly on theories developed inother fields (Buzzell 1963; Baker 1995; Murray et al.1997). Gummesson (2001, p. 29), for example, describesmarketing management as “a patchwork of fragmentedmodels, assumptions, case stories and checklists on top of apartially obsolete foundation: micro-economics, marketingmix, four Ps, and the marketing of packaged consumergoods.” Concomitant with these criticisms, calls for puttingstronger efforts on theory development in marketing arenearly as old as the academic discipline itself (Alderson andCox 1948) and have been persistently repeated by a varietyof marketing scholars (Day and Montgomery 1999;Malhotra 1999; Carter 2011). However, the response tosuch calls has been muted. In fact, instead of a strongeremphasis on theory, the opposite appears to be the case:Baumgartner and Pieters (2003) showed that marketingpublications overwhelmingly focus on applications andYadav (2009) observed that, among articles published inleading marketing journals during a thirty year period(1978–2007), conceptual articles actually declined. Still,despite the dearth of conceptual articles—or just because oftheir relative scarcity—they receive disproportionatelymore citations (Yadav 2009).So why are there not more marketing scholarsfocusing on theory development? One reason appearsto be the historically strong practitioner influence on thediscipline. And with an increasing influence of practi-tioners, the emphasis “shifted from theoretical toempirical research, from basic to applied thoughtdevelopment, and from educational to occupationalconcerns” (Bartels 1983, p. 33). Consequently, untiltoday, “the majority of marketingacademics more closelyidentify themselves with marketing practice and appliedpractitioner-oriented research, rather than theory develop-ment” (Burton 2005,p.6).Another explanation for the lack of theoretical groundingin marketing may lie in the unresolved discourse amongmarketing scholars on what constitutes a suitable level oftheory aggregation. Venkatesh (1985), for example, arguesthat theories lie on a continuum ranging from those thatfollow a natural science model (highest form) to those thatmerely relate empirical findings to other empirical findings(lowest form). If we were to accept the argument that thelatter would be sufficient to constitute a theory, marketingwould actually be a very theory rich field! Burton (2005)draws an interesting distinction between “theories ofmarketing” and “theories in marketing.” The former aregeneral or universal theories of marketing, such asBagozzi’s(1975) theory of marketing as exchange or Vargoand Lusch’s(2004, 2006) service dominant logic theory,whereas the latter are theories that are frequently rooted inother subject areas, such as psychology, but have proven tobe very useful in researching marketing topics, such asAjzen’s(1985) theory of planned behavior. Some prominentmarketing scholars, such as Hunt (1983) and Gronroos(1994), argue that scholarly efforts in marketing should bedirected to develop the former, that is, theories ofmarketing. Others view grand theories of marketing as tooremoved from marketing practice (Bird 1996), argue thatmarketing cannot be described nor understood by any onegeneral theory (Anderson 1986; Arndt 1985; Burton 2005;Moller 2007) or even regard them as a waste of time andeffort (Prendergast and Berthon 2000).