I find the discussions of the role of social purpose in marketing fascinating. Unlike a lot of marketing discussions this can make it into popular debates. Owen Jones, a UK Guardian (left leaning) opinion journalist gave his view on brands and the culture wars. The open question — Woke-Washing: A Big Deal? LGBT Sandwich Jones…
The Role Of Budgeting In Organizations
One of the problems managers face with budgets is that budgeting has a variety of different roles. These roles can all be important but the roles sometimes conflict. Barrett and Fraser writing in the Harvard Business Review more than 40 years ago distinguished between three types of budgets: Capital (major investment planning), Financial (cash flow/bank…
The Pragmatic And Principled Reasons For Political Marketing Research
In a new paper in Customer Needs and Solutions Jennifer Lees-Marshment lays out why politics should matter to marketing scholars. She tells us the pragmatic and principled reasons for political marketing research. Why Study Political Marketing? Lees-Marshment argues that “the dominant research philosophy [in political marketing] is pragmatism, the methodology depends on the research question…
Politics And Marketing Fit Together Very Naturally
On and off over the next couple of months I will blog about a special issue of Customer Needs and Solutions (CNS), I co-edited this with David Schweidel at Emory. The intention of Min Ding, the CNS editor, was to promote the linkages between marketing and politics. To show that politics and marketing fit together…
Demonstrating the Financial Impact of Marketing Actions
Paul Magill, Christine Moorman and Nikita Avdiushko raise a major problem in marketing. Demonstrating the Financial Impact of Marketing Actions Critical To Show The Financial Impact of Marketing Actions As the authors say When we asked over 300 marketing leaders in the U.S. to identify the activities they find most challenging, the number one thing…
Academic Life In The 18th Century
As a bit of variety today I will make some notes on academic life in the 18th century. The source is a book on the friendship between two of the great figures of the enlightenment, David Hume and Adam Smith. Dennis Rasmussen outlines their friendship. It is clearly remarkable that such great thinkers were such…
Catch 22 And Accounting For Employees
A theme of mine is the challenge that marketers have with financial accounting. Essentially most marketing spending is accounted for as an expense. This is even if it has the explicit intention to be an investment. This makes financial reports pretty poor for understanding the marketing of a firm. What about Human Resources (HR). We…
Entertainment Science
Thorsten Hennig-Thurau and Mark Houston published a comprehensive review of research in the entertainment industries. This book, Entertainment Science, gives more attention to movies than music, games and books, mainly for reasons to do with available research. It is still a fascinating look into all these industries and an amazingly comprehensive book. Nobody Knows Anything…
The Marketing-Accounting Interface
There is a lot of work linking marketing and finance. Unfortunately, at least from my perspective, nearly all of this has focused on linking marketing to financial markets. Such work is useful but I would like more looking at more diverse linkages between marketing and accounting. Sidhu and Robert’s article is an exception. They look…
Omni-Channel Distribution
At times marketing seems like it is only getting harder. Omni-channel distribution means more ways to communicate and sell to the customer. There is just some much to worry about. Showrooming New technology often drives new ways to communicate with and reach consumers. It also means many more opportunities. It also means many more challenges….
