Volume 17, Number 2 Article by Priya Jha Dang and Abraham Koshy June, 2005
Reconciling Dichotomies in Marketing Theory and Practice :
Since the 1950s, there have been attempts to generate theories and laws in the marketing discipline. However, there has not been much progress, and the discipline has very little by way of formal theories and laws. Priya Jha Dang and Abraham Koshy aim to identify reasons for the low level of theoretical development in marketing.
Beginning with a review of the nature of the discipline, Dang and Koshy observe that since marketing deals with human behaviour, it is not possible to apply the tools and techniques of physical sciences to it to develop parsimonious models that can adequately explain and predict reality. Marketing is also a contextdriven discipline where marketing phenomena change over both time and situation.
A review of the knowledge development practices within marketing reveals a set of dichotomies that constrain the development of theory. These include the dichotomy between positivist and relativistic research paradigms, between theory creation and theory testing and between academics and practice. The paper suggests means of accelerating knowledge development within the field through an inductive theory-creation process based on case research; integration of different research paradigms in the contexts of 'discovery' and 'justification'; and greater interaction between academics and practitioners. The informal theories built by practitioners in the course of managerial activity are an important source of insights for researchers who can use this knowledge to generate formal theories and laws.
Reprint No 05207
