Chapter 4: The academic discipline of Marketing
4.3 LCT analysis of the academic discipline of Marketing
4.3.2 Semantics
other disciplines did and Amantha agreed that in Marketing students were “given a lot of room to say our feelings”. Many of the students had chosen to major in Marketing because of the perceived fit with their personalities and several (such as Amantha, Sihle, Maxine and Bongani) often described themselves as creative and people-oriented. It was felt that good Marketing students need to be creative, outgoing, „vibey‟, crazy, fun, open-minded, happy, be able to think quickly, see and capitalise on opportunities and express themselves confidently. Bongani also felt that it was important to be passionate and “amped or hyped up to do Marketing”.
…I think, like, as a marketer you need to need to, like, be an extrovert…personality is important. Like this guy from [name of company that participates in UKZN’s graduate recruitment programme] said, like, marketing people are happy people. So I think that’s the kind of…you need to be very open-minded (Nothando).
Only two of the nine students, Kiara and Amantha, mentioned that having a good knowledge of Marketing concepts was important. According to Nothando, what was more important in Marketing was “the creativity, coming up with concepts, making like a brand…you make the brand alive”. She also felt that the weight given to individual attributes meant that it was possible for somebody to find employment in marketing “if they‟ve got a creative side or if they‟ve got that edge…they can make it without getting the Honours [degree] and everything else that comes with it”.
It is clear that strong social relations (SR+) were espoused in Marketing at UKZN.
The combination of weaker epistemic relations and stronger social relations in Marketing at UKZN corresponds to a knower code (ER-, SR+).
The discipline in general
As previously mentioned, Marketing has had an applied orientation since its emergence as an academic discipline (Rust, 2006) and even today a “managerialist emphasis remains central to the identity of the discipline” (Tadajewski & Brownlie, 2008, p.3; Catterall et al, 2002; Witkowski, 2010). This can be seen in Marketing‟s concern with managerial relevance, real world pragmatism and the application of Marketing knowledge to specific firms and products (Hemais, 2001; Crump & Costea, 2003; Holbrook, 2005; Erasmus & Loedolff, 2005; Rust, 2006; Tamilia &
Veilleux, 2007; Reibstein et al, 2009). Scholarship in Marketing is “overwhelmingly rooted in applied research” (Burton, 2001, p.729), with research articles typically including a section providing implications of findings for the market (Hemais, 2001). Pedagogy is often based on case studies (Schmidt-Wilk, 2010; Glenn, 2011), and Marketing textbooks are characterised by a proliferation of examples (Hunt, 2002) and „case vignettes‟ (Hackley, 2003). Marketing graduates are expected to be able to apply knowledge in ways that are „context-relevant‟ (Walker et al, 2009). Job market utility is implicit in many programmes (Rotfeld, 1996). Bovinet argues that this is vital because “(s)tudents are consumers. It is important to be able to show them and their parents a practical end-product: a degree in marketing which is relevant to the pursuit of a rewarding career in the field” (2007, no page). Unsurprisingly, therefore, Holbrook (2005) makes reference to the pressure that is placed on Marketing lecturers to adopt a vocational orientation so as to ensure that qualifications lead to employment (an orientation that he does not favour).
Accordingly, the discipline has been described as context-driven (Sheth & Sisodia, 1999). Of particular relevance to this discussion, Macfarlane asserts that disciplines such as Management and Marketing “are perceived to be context-dependent and, as a result, derive their legitimacy from being highly responsive to short-term changes in business practice” (Macfarlane, 1997b, p.52, emphasis in original). In line with this perception, Reibstein et al issue a call for “the whole marketing academic community to work on relevant business problems” (2009, p.3). Of note, however, is that Macfarlane (1997b) states that Marketing is „perceived to be‟ context-dependent and responsive to business practice, perhaps an insinuation that this perception may not in practice be the case – something that will be considered further in Chapter 5.
The context-bound nature of meaning in Marketing is also evident in the relative lack of attention given to the development of abstract theory in the discipline (Robson & Rowe, 1997; Hubbard &
Lindsay, 2002; Crump & Costea, 2003; Burton, 2005; Rust, 2006), as outlined in Section 4.3.1. In fact, Marketing was singled out as the business discipline that is “least-theorised” (Burton, 2005, p.16). It has been said that the lack of theory building in Marketing might be due to the discipline‟s primary focus on quantitative rather than qualitative research and that the latter would be useful in developing new constructs (Burgess & Steenkamp, 2006; O‟Driscoll, 2008).
Given the greater emphasis placed in Marketing on the application of knowledge to specific contexts, rather than on the development of abstract theory, the discipline can be said to exhibit stronger semantic gravity (SG+).
Marketing at UKZN
Both the lecturers and the students mentioned the importance of application in Marketing.
Because Marketing was seen to be “very hands on” (Nisha) and “very practical” (Kiara), doing well in the discipline entailed more than simply the understanding of Marketing concepts.
To be successful, you need to understand from a theoretical point of view, and you need to apply (Nisha).
Kiara agreed that what was important was:
…knowing how to apply the theory. It’s not just reading to get through the reading; it’s reading to understand, reading to apply and look at it in context of, you know, what’s going on - and that’s what makes you successful.
Course documents also highlighted this focus on application. The first page of the Consumer Behaviour course outline indicated that “(t)he student‟s understanding of consumer behavior will develop through an examination of core concepts and their applications in business practice”. In addition, the prescribed textbooks for both modules contained several examples and case studies in each chapter (see Churchill et al, 2010; Schiffman et al, 2010). The course outlines indicate that an application-based group assignment was included as an assessment task in both modules.
The students viewed the ability to provide “practical examples” and to apply Marketing knowledge to “real life situations” (Sihle) as crucial, especially because in some modules they were “doing a lot of case studies” (Kiara). Accordingly, they felt that they needed to be interested in the media and “well rounded in what‟s going on in the real world” (Kiara).
Well, it’s a practical thing, I mean…When you are studying Marketing, you’re studying, I think, something that you do...I mean, you do when you go to the store…you look at the thing, you know. We study about things that we see in the market, you know, the things that are happening in front of our eyes, so it’s quite nice to study something that is so practical (Ben).
The importance attached to practicality and the application of Marketing concepts to different contexts is reflective of stronger semantic gravity (SG+).
Semantic density
Stronger semantic density (SD+) indicates greater condensation of meaning in Marketing concepts; the opposite is true of weaker semantic density (SD-).
According to Hashem (2007, p.184), the prestige of a field is “partly based on the apparent unintelligibility of the knowledge it supplies”.
The discipline in general
British universities for a long time considered business and management studies to be unsuitable for university level education as the academic content of its disciplines was deemed too
„superficial‟ (Brown, 1997). „Superficial‟ alludes to surface or shallow meanings, rather than condensed meanings, and is thus indicative of weaker semantic density.
Similarly, Hunt refers to the „dumbing down‟ of contemporary Marketing textbooks compared to those of, for example, the 1960s:
It is now commonplace for publishers to require that introductory textbooks be written with the absolute minimum of words that have three syllables or more.
Such a requirement was not in place in the 1960s. Can two-syllable words adequately convey the cognitive content of marketing? If „yes‟, perhaps marketing does not belong in a university programme. If „no‟, we are short- changing our students.
(2002, pp.310-311)
Additionally, Mauranen (2001, p.44) refers to an implicit rhetorical style, in which things are left unsaid “so as to leave plenty of space for the reader‟s interpretative skills”, as „poetic‟; by contrast, an explicit rhetorical style, in which clear guidance is provided for readers throughout the text, is referred to as „marketing‟. Indeed, the writing of Marketing academics is based on the idea of “plain prose, simply put” (Brown, 2004, p.335). This might be because much writing in Marketing is “a populist enterprise” (Hackley, 2003, p.1328). However, Crosling (2005) provides some additional insight into the reasons for the favoured style of writing in Marketing. She explores lecturers‟ expectations of students‟ writing in a range of business disciplines, including Marketing, and interprets these expectations in terms of the values of business generally as well as those of the particular disciplines. Lecturers were provided with a list of indicators and asked to rate these in terms of their importance for successful writing in their discipline. The highest ranking indicators for Marketing, in order of priority, were: “clear conclusion; coherent and concise expression of information; addressing task; clear purpose; unambiguous response; logical development/explanation of purpose; points supported with research data/evidence” (2005, p.6).
Crosling asserts that these relate to the general business values of efficient and purpose driven
operations, in that “information is conveyed efficiently and directly, saving time and cost” (2005, p.6). Marketing was the only one of the six disciplines included in the survey that rated
„formulating an unambiguous response‟ highly. According to Crosling, this is meaningful in light of marketing practice whereby “a product must unambiguously be presented as the best, creating a view in the consumer‟s mind that it is best able to meet their needs, and therefore warranting purchase” (2005, p.7).
The above discussion points to weaker semantic density (SD-) in the discipline of Marketing, giving a combination of (SG+, SD-).
This combination of stronger semantic gravity and weaker semantic density in Marketing is one that does not facilitate cumulative learning, whereby over time new knowledge is built through the integration and subsumption of existing knowledge (Freebody et al, 2008; Maton, 2009). Stronger semantic gravity indicates that meaning in Marketing is context bound. Knowledge develops horizontally via segmental aggregation, by applying concepts to different contexts and situations.
Segmented learning is thus associated with higher semantic gravity. Indeed, O‟Shaughnessy and Ryan assert that “there are no paradigms showing cumulative progress in the explanatory powers of the discipline” (1979, p. 153) and Wellman contends that Marketing theory “fails to interlink observed phenomena in any deep and effective way” (2010a, p.121).
Marketing at UKZN
Ben‟s claim that Marketing is “not that intense in terms of, er, demanding...your thinking” and Michael‟s statement that Marketing is “not conceptually challenging” could be taken as an indication that the degree of condensation of meaning in Marketing concepts is not high.
This interpretation is supported by Kiara‟s assertions that Marketing is “to the point”, with “no beating around the bush” and no use of “hidden metaphors or semantics”. She felt that students needed to write clearly and concisely in Marketing courses, because that is what would be expected in marketing practice.
In discussing the stimulus piece during their interviews, the majority of the students and lecturers preferred Response A. Some of the reasons that the lecturers gave for their preference were that Response A was “more direct”, “short, sweet, straight to the point” (Nisha); “very straightforward, factual” and “to the point” (Kamini). Similarly, students noted that Response A was “concise”,
“straight to the point”, “distinct” (Kiara) and “made everything clear” (Sihle).
The above is indicative of weaker semantic density (SD-).
Combining the two dimensions gives a code for Density at UKZN of (SG+, SD-) i.e. higher gravity and weaker density.