Journal Evolution and the Development of Marketing

Abstract

The main, original journals in marketing are Journal of Retailing (1925) and Journal of Marketing (1937). To an important extent, the field evolved from these progenitors. As Wilkie and Moore (2003) note, there was an explosion of new journals in the 1980s. This article considers the nature of the journals that have emerged in marketing and the order in which they were found to examine the pattern of growth in the field. This analysis includes only marketing journals. Thus, numerous outlets that publish marketing-related research are not included, such as Management Science, Journal of International Business Studies, and Sloan Management Review. Although these journals have a major impact on the field, they are largely forums for work in other areas and thus do not provide an unconfounded reflection of trends in marketing. The primary sources of journal articles and discussion are four articles: Baumgartner and Pieters (2003), Harzing (2004), Hult, Neese, and Bashaw (1997), and Theoharakis and Hirst (2002). Several categorization schemes have been provided. For example, Baumgartner and Pieters use five categories: core marketing, consumer behavior, managerial marketing, marketing applications, and marketing education. In this analysis, I use a modification of this that includes more categories to trace the evolution of journals over time.