Sources and use of marketing information by marketing managers
| Published date | 11 September 2007 |
| Pages | 702-726 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410710827763 |
| Date | 11 September 2007 |
| Author | Roger Bennett |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Sources and use of marketing
information by marketing
managers
Roger Bennett
Centre for Research in Marketing,
London Metropolitan University, London, UK
Abstract
Purpose – The paper aims to establish which formally and informally published sources of
knowledge were mainly used by executives in the computer service industry to obtain knowledge of
current developments in the field of marketing and to examine the purposes for which the knowledge
gathered from these sources was employed.
Design/methodology/approach – Marketing managers in 141 large computer services businesses
completed a questionnaire concerning the extents to which they used books, marketing magazines,
academic journals, and grey literature (GL) for instrumental, conceptual, and symbolic purposes. Four
“motivating factors” (e.g. occupational learning orientation) were examined plus three other influences
(e.g. length of time in a marketing role). The possible consequences of the extensive use of various
sources were explored.
Findings – Only 2 per cent of the sample read academic marketing journals, and just 3 per cent
looked at marketing textbooks. However, 89 per cent of the sample accessed (mainly internet-based)
grey marketing literature and 62 per cent read marketing magazines. Nearly, one in six of the
respondents stated that they had read practitioner “how to do” marketing books. Several hypothesised
independent variables exerted positive and significant impacts on the degrees to which magazines; GL
and practitioner books were employed to obtain marketing knowledge.
Research limitations/implications – It was not possible to examine exactly why a particular
knowledge source was preferred for a specific purpose. Potential connections between past academic
research outputs and the contents of contemporary grey marketing literature and articles in marketing
magazines could not be investigated. The results imply that GL must be recognised as a vital source of
marketing knowledge. Issues relating to the codification and wider distribution of GL, copyright, the
shortage of specialised GL bibliographies in the marketing area, and the long-term availability of
materials in electronic form need to be addressed.
Originality/value – This was the first empirical study to connect the use of marketing knowledge
sources to the purposes (instrumental, conceptual, symbolic) for which the knowledge contained
within them was required.
Keywords Knowledge capture,Marketing information, Publications, Magazines,Grey literature
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
This paper investigates the question of how in reality marketing executives obtain
knowledge about new developments in the marketing area and how they then employ
knowledge gathered from various sources for specific purposes. A substantial body of
research evidence suggests that marketing managers rarely (if ever) read academic
marketing journals (Ankers and Brennan, 2002; McKenzie et al., 2002; Ottesen and
Gronhaug, 2004; Tapp, 2004; Cornelissen and Lock, 2005). Consequently, it has been
alleged, largeamounts of academic marketingknowledge are never used by practitioners
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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JDOC
63,5
702
Received 1 March 2006
Revised 10 May 2006
Accepted 22 June 2006
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 63 No. 5, 2007
pp. 702-726
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/00220410710827763
(Ottesen and Gronhaug, 2004). Ankers and Brennan (2002) in particular found that
experienced marketing executives typically knew very little about the current state of
academicresearch in marketing; an outcome consistentwith a plethora of studies citedby
Cornelissen and Lock (2005) which had concluded that academic marketing theory was
hardly ever appliedto real-life marketing situations. The research reported in the present
paper explored the extents to which marketing managers actually refer to academic
journals and other sources of information (e.g. magazines) about marketing via a mail
survey of executivesin 141 businesses. This survey employeda questionnaire based on a
model derived froma literature review and which was designedto explain the degrees of
use of varioustypes of source of marketing knowledge.The paper begins withan account
of the criticisms of academic journals sometimes espoused by practitioners, and the
consequential employment by practitioners of alternative sources of marketing
knowledge (notably grey literature (GL)). Then the process of knowledge sourcing is
examinedin greater detail and various knowledgesources are related toalternative forms
of knowledgeapplication.A model of the antecedentsof the extents to which managersuse
four different types of knowledge source is developed, and the model’s verification
through a mailsurvey of marketing executivesis described. Finally, the resultsof the test
of the model are discussed and their implications examined.
The cases for and against academic marketing literature
Practitioners have been reported to complain that academic marketing literature is too
difficult to follow, too vague, too abstract, and “largely irrelevant to their daily
concerns” (Orpen, 1995, p. 22). Cornelissen and Lock (2005) noted how marketing
managers routinely attacked academics for undertaking research that is trivial, lacking
in new ideas, which simply records past events, and which is dominated by
methodological technique at the expense of organisational and competitive market
realities. A survey completed by Ankers and Brennan (2002, p. 18) similarly concluded
that marketing managers routinely criticised the outputs to academic research for
being impractical and out-of-date and written in language that was grandiose,
unnecessarily complicated, jargon-ridden, and “generally incomprehensible to
practitioners”. The managers involved preferred the straightforward written style
typical of marketing magazines and, even more, of reports issued by consultancies.
Academics for their part sometimes disparage the “theories” expounded by
practitioners on the grounds that they are subjective, unreliable, not grounded in
proven facts, non-generalisable, disjointed, and lacking in coherence (Cornelis sen and
Lock, 2005). Marketing academics might insist, moreover, that theory derived from
scholarly research will have been arrived at scientifically (as opposed to having relied
on common sense and intuition – Orpen, 1995) by well-educated people who are
relatively detached from the pressures of the everyday commercial world. Hence,
academics are supposedly more objective in their thinking and able to formulate
theories at high levels of generality, making their theories applicable to a wide range of
non-context specific situations (Cornelissen and Lock, 2005). Scholarly writing in the
marketing domain, according to Parasuraman (2003, p. 316):
.provides “food for thought” to practitioners;
.offers managerial recommendations and “how-to-do-guidelines”; and
.prepares individuals to become successful senior executives.
Sources and use
of marketing
information
703
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