Albert Einstein notably asserted that “It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.” Cast against the backdrop of Einstein’s assertion, the present research critically examines the enduring yet unresolved controversy regarding marketing as a science. Consider that the marketing discipline is nearing its first-century of inception, the Journal of Marketing is approaching its eighth decade of publication, and yet marketing academicians still debate the epistemology of marketing itself. Virtually all theories in marketing are adaptations of theory-development from other social science disciplines. The overarching research mission is to critically review a body of marketing theory using a meta-analytic approach to illuminate gaps in the epistemic foundations of marketing knowledge development. Grounded in the theory of composition, an entire body of Shelby D. Hunt's marketing literature – more than 130 effects encapsulating five of the most widely-cited marketing theoretical streams to date – is critically evaluated. Using scientometric analyses, the impact factors, citation indices, and the domain of references across the allied behavioral science literatures are empirically assessed. An epistemic inquiry to the marketing discipline is the only way that a discipline may be viewed as a science, and its importance lies in this being the way for a discipline to advance in theory and practice. Second, this study seeks to identify a body of theoretical development emanating from the marketing discipline that has been proffered by a single academician. The research aspiration was to potentially link the theoretician to the epistemic process in the marketing discipline. Toward this end, this dissertation empirically explored the impact of three marketing scholars who have the highest number of publications in the Journal of Marketing and compared their scientometric indexes with Shelby D. Hunt’s. Results indicate that Hunt has a higher impact overall compared to the other marketing scholars. Moreover, scientometrics indexes indicate that Hunt also has a profound interdisciplinary impact. In order for marketing to continue to progress and not be marginalized or be fragmented, marketing scholars need to nurture theory generation, development and maintenance. The training of emerging scholars has far-reaching repercussions on these important aspects of the discipline. The doctoral students, therefore, should be treated as immediate learners instead of being considered to be immediate producers, duly encouraging “creative cognitive acts, significantly constrained and reasoned,” to quote Shelby D. Hunt.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc699968 |
| Date | 08 1900 |
| Creators | Zuberi, Mel F. |
| Contributors | Pelton, Lou E., Chowdhury, Jhinuk, Davis, Mark A. |
| Publisher | University of North Texas |
| Source Sets | University of North Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | vi, 167 pages : color illustration, Text |
| Rights | Public, Zuberi, Mel F., Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. |
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