SERVICE DOMINANT LOGIC

Service Dominant Logic

Service Dominant Logic

Hackleys typology

How might critical thinking, however it is designated, be applied in Marketing? Criticisms of marketing studies persist, then, in spite of seemingly unceasing demand for its ideas in the form of management education, books and courses. But it is precisely this popularity which adds urgency to calls for marketing studies to open up to more critical approaches. Broadly, these fall into four overlapping categories, outlined here and developed throughout the book. These are labeled as functional, intellectual, ethical and, finally, political critique. This typology is used here not as a theory but simply as a literary and pedagogic device to help organize forms of critique in Marketing into more manageable subdivisions.

Four Critique of Service Dominant Logic

Functional Critique

The first category, examples of which have been outlined above, concerns criticisms which accept the discipline's key assumptions as a technical, managerial problem-solving enterprise but challenge the validity and efficacy of particular ideas with this approach. In other words, we can ask the question: 'do Marketing techniques work?' So Marketing studies is seen as an applied management field, and the academic role is to try to research and develop Marketing techniques to improve management training, education and practice (Economist, 2005, 76).

This inward-looking Marketing studies has two main dimensions. On the one hand, Marketing tools and concepts are evaluated in the light of evidence of how, and if, they get results in application. On the other hand, and equally importantly, they are evaluated in terms of their internal coherence and evidence base. Many criticisms in this vein imply an evaluation of outcomes, however they might be measured, and a critical appraisal of the intellectual coherence of marketing management prescriptions (Haeckel, 1999, 23).

For example, few Marketing textbooks do not draw on the 'AIDA' linear model of persuasive advertising adapted from the work of Strong (1925). This 85-year-old communication theory, based on personal selling, conceptualizes Marketing communication in terms of a sequence of internal states through which the receiver of the communication progresses. In order to be effective, a Marketing communication is said to have to get the Attention of the targeted receiver, then to generate Interest, promote Desire and finally persuade the receiver into Action, that is, purchase.

This model has been criticized on many grounds. It is neat and simple, but some argue that it is simply wrong from a practice point of view, others that it fails to capture the social character of Marketing communication, while still others have argued that it is such a gross simplification that it fails to teach students anything useful. In this way, functional criticisms of marketing management ideas overlap into evaluations of their internal coherence and evidence base. Criticism of Marketing's practical effectiveness, its functionality, then, entails an evaluation of its key managerial principles, tools and concepts. In particular, it focuses on the challenges which unpredictable, quirky and creative human beings, and the complex social dynamics of markets and organizations, pose to the simplistic formulae of the managerial Marketing ...