Ruminations on Theory and Research Scholarship in Marketing

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Wroe Alderson’s (1965) Dynamic Marketing Behavior: A Functionalist Theory of Marketing. In this tome, Alderson expands his thinking from Marketing Behavior and Executive Action: A Functionalist Approach to Marketing (Alderson 1957). Together, these two books arguably constitute the only comprehensive attempt to construct a general theory of marketing. This anniversary presents an appropriate moment to reflect briefly on theory and research scholarship in marketing in the context of Wilkie and Moore’s (2003) “4 Eras” article on the development of marketing thought. Theory and Marketing Dynamic Marketing Behavior (Alderson 1965) was published during Wilkie and Moore’s (2003) third era of marketing thought development. Analogous to Alderson’s previous works, the writing in Dynamic Marketing Behavior is both obtuse and obscure. (This is partially because Alderson passed away before the book was published. Therefore, he was not able to fine-tune or edit it.) Dynamic Marketing Behavior is also analogous to his previous works insofar as it is intellectually innovative, interesting, and prescient. Although some of his thinking has been criticized, many of the concepts and insights that he articulated, such as the transvection as a unit of marketing analysis, the notion that exchange is the nexus of marketing, the expression of competition in terms of ecology, and the experiential benefits of a product, have been discovered, forgotten, and rediscovered time and time again (see, e.g., Smalley and Fraedrich 1995). The last chapter in Dynamic Marketing Behavior consists of what Alderson (1965) terms 150 falsifiable, functionalistic “propositions,” such as “[m]eta-stable oligopoly can represent a constructive adjustment between new product innovation and competition on existing products,” and “[s]tudying marketing in an ecological framework opens the way for considering a variety of interactions, including the prevailing combination of competition and cooperation.” For each proposition, Alderson suggests either a research project or research procedures for addressing it. In certain ways, these propositions are similar to the 23 mathematical problems and areas for investigation with which David Hilbert challenged mathematicians in 1900. Unlike Hilbert’s problems and areas, however, few of Alderson’s propositions have been addressed. Indeed, the very existence of the 150 propositions is probably unknown to the majority of marketing scholars, especially those graduating in the past quarter century and whose coursework did not include a marketing theory course. Judging from the number of marketing doctoral programs that presently offer a course in marketing theory, as well as the number of programs that have eliminated a doctoral course in marketing theory, an inescapable conclusion is that marketing theory is presently deemed an irrelevant and/or unnecessary subject. Given the resources required for staffing a marketing theory course, together with the need for leading-edge courses in quantitative methods and specialty courses that correspond to particular research interests, perhaps the absence of marketing theory courses is warranted. However, as I subsequently discuss, the absence of such potentially integrating courses may contribute to the fragmentation in marketing thought that Wilkie and Moore (2003, pp. 141‐42) observe.