Ascending separate stairways to marketing heaven (or careful with that axiom, Eugene!)

Abstract

The last decade has seen much soul‐searching within the Marketing Academy as it struggles to address what Brown has described as the discipline’s “mid‐life crisis”. Magee terms this tendency “metanoia” and observes that no less a work than “Dante’s Inferno begins with lines that refer to it”. He notes how people reaching this point often “turn in on themselves, and perhaps turn towards religion”. It is with this “metanoid” perspective on marketing theory that the authors of this piece present two possible paths to epistemological paradise; one route representing an inward re‐evaluation and the other more of an outward exploration. Two of the authors combine to take an axiomatic approach to rediscovering the celestial citadel, whereas the third has forsaken the fundamentalist fortress. In his, the second, sermon Brother Nick implores you to reject the foregoing calls to get back to basics, and instead, to embrace a more contemporary, critical orientation to “dat ole time marketing religion”.

Citation

Mayer, R., Job, K. and Ellis, N. (2000), "Ascending separate stairways to marketing heaven (or careful with that axiom, Eugene!)", Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 18 No. 6/7, pp. 388-399. https://doi.org/10.1108/02634500010348987