The Italian contribution to the marketing literature

Marco Galvagno

doi:10.1007/s43039-022-00051-2

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to describe the contribution of Italian scholars to the international literature of marketing, and to identify the intellectual structure of Italian scholars’ production, by mapping the co-authorships network and the main researched themes. Results highlight that Italian marketing scholars significantly intensified their productivity in the last ten years from different viewpoints. There has been a growing process of internationalization, a grownup of articles published by multiple co-authors in journals with higher impact factor, and a better performance in terms of citations of Italian papers compared to the international average. These results are all positive signals of a dynamic and developing community.

Highlights

The development of the marketing field in Italy has been characterized by a slow and non-linear path
We implemented two techniques, namely performance analysis and science mapping (Donthu et al, 2021). The former examines the performance of the Italian marketing scholars, by measuring the number of publications and citations, where publication is a proxy for productivity, while citation is a measure of impact and influence
This work aimed to identify the contribution of the Italian scholars to the marketing literature

Summary

Introduction

The development of the marketing field in Italy has been characterized by a slow and non-linear path. As reported by Varaldo et al (2006), it is possible to identify four phases in the evolution of marketing science in Italy and : the antecedent phase (1950s), the birth phase (1960s), the development phase (1970s–80s) and the consolidation phase (1990s) It was only in the last decade of the twentieth century that Italian scholars began to take part in the international debate; the establishment of the Italian Society of Marketing (SIM), in 2004, gave an enormous cultural impetus, in terms of scientific contribution, methodologies, internationalization and collaboration among colleagues. Factors related to the economic-industrial context and factors related to the academic context should be highlighted Among the former, it is worth mentioning the particular configuration of the Italian economy, which is mainly characterized by small and medium-sized family businesses and specific forms of aggregation, such as industrial districts. There are, on one hand, the strong tradition of Economia Aziendale founded by Gino Zappa—which distinguished the Italian academy at the beginning—that conceived the firm as a “unitary economic complex” and was “reluctant to accept research related to specific functions” (Varaldo et al, 2006: p. 6); on the other hand, the difficulty of publishing in English and the prevailing form of academic dissemination of scientific knowledge which was essentially based on monographs

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