Purpose – In a world where commerce and culture are still somewhat estranged, the purpose of this paper is to show that high culture’s supreme exponents were commercially minded masters of marketing. Design/methodology/approach – Historically situated, the paper adopts a biographical...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the widely‐held belief that marketing holds customers in thrall and persuades them to buy things they otherwise would not. Design/methodology/approach – Rather than adopt a scientific approach to the mesmeric marketing phenomenon, it...

Thirty years ago, Philip Kotler drafted the modern marketing constitution and most would agree that it has served the discipline well. A generation on from Kotler’s conceptual charter, however, our rainbow coalition is in a state of disarray. Marketing is doubted by its scholarly citizens,...

Marketing academics have recently been exhorted to embrace postmodernism, the so‐called “new perspective on life and the human condition that is sweeping across the globe”. Using postmodernism′s own tools of playfulness, paradox and irreverence – in the shape of the multiplex cinema as...

Purpose The aim of this overview is to reflect on the family resemblances between psychogeography and marketing history. Design/methodology/approach The paper is informally predicated on the perspectives and philosophies of literary theory in general and New Historicism in particular. Findings...

An introduction to the special issue “A taste of paradise”. Discusses the various representations of paradise over time and asserts that these have always reflected the society that produced them. Stresses that marketing is unavoidably implicated in our perceptions of paradise. Refers to the...

Just prior to the recent millennial transition, The Observer polled a cross‐section of British celebrities about their perceptions of paradise. Most of these were suitably vague – perpetual joy, renewed relationships, blissful state of mind etc. – but the anarchic comedian Mark Thomas...

According to John Grant’s New Marketing Manifesto , contemporary consumers “act their shoe size not their age” by resolutely refusing to grow up. They are not alone. Managers too are adopting a kiddy imperative, as the profusion of primers predicated on children’s literature – and...

The past may be a foreign country, according to L.P. Hartley, but marketers seem to have secured resident alien status. Retro products, services, advertisements and pricing policies are everywhere apparent, as are heritage centres, mega‐brand museums, festival shopping malls and...

The “drop and collect” survey technique is fast, cheap, reliable and particularly suited to those with limited resources, yet it has been neglected in the marketing literature. The advantages and disadvantages of the procedure are outlined, and the results of a simple experiment which...