From academic research to marketing practice: Exploring the marketing science value chain

Abstract

We aim to investigate the impact of marketing science articles and tools on the practice of marketing. This impact may be direct (e.g., an academic article may be adapted to solve a practical problem) or indirect (e.g., its contents may be incorporated into practitioners' tools, which then influence marketing decision making).We use the term “marketing science value chain” to describe these diffusion steps, and survey marketing managers, marketing science intermediaries (practicing marketing analysts), and marketing academics to calibrate the value chain. In our sample, we find that (1) the impact of marketing science is perceived to be largest on decisions such as the management of brands, pricing, new products, product portfolios, and customer/market selection, and (2) tools such as segmentation, survey-based choice models, marketing mix models, and pre-test market models have the largest impact on marketing decisions. Exemplary papers from 1982 to 2003 that achieved dual – academic and practice – impact are Guadagni and Little (1983) and Green and Srinivasan (1990). Overall, our results are encouraging. First, we find that the impact of marketing science has been largest on marketing decision areas that are important to practice. Second, we find moderate alignment between academic impact and practice impact. Third, we identify antecedents of practice impact among dual impact marketing science papers. Fourth, we discover more recent trends and initiatives in the period 2004–2012, such as the increased importance of big data and the rise of digital and mobile communication, using the marketing science value chain as an organizing framework.