The environmental turbulence concept in marketing: A look back and a look ahead

Abstract

Environmental turbulence has garnered consistent interest in marketing as perhaps the chief externality affecting a business’ strategic capabilities, activities, and outcomes. Surprisingly, a review of turbulence—its conceptualization, measurement, and empirical relationships—has not been conducted. Our study systematically reviews the marketing literature on environmental turbulence to determine its interpretation, measurement, empirical effects, and nomological networks. Based on our findings, we propose a two-pronged research pathway to advance the utility of the turbulence concept and thus strengthen marketing knowledge and practice. The pathway centers on concurrent convergence and divergence in turbulence’s definition, conceptual structure, primary and secondary measurements, and theoretical roles and relationships in light of environmental shifts since Kohli and Jaworski’s seminal articulation of turbulence more than three decades ago. We then draw implications for marketing scholarship and practice from our analysis.