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...

Innovations in retailing are characterised by, first, a hostile reaction from established organisations and, second, by a distinctive pattern of evolution. This article presents an integrated theory of retail change which is used to describe the development of the retail warehouse, one of the...

Initially dismissed as one among many intellectual fads, postmodernism now occupies a prominent position in all manner of academic disciplines. Although marketers have not been slow to board the postmodern bandwagon, the majority of analyses thus far have been preoccupied with the concept′s...

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...

Provides an introduction to the Special Issue by discussing the nature of marketing science in a postmodern world. Argues that science needs marketing more than marketing needs science. (Look folks, I didn’t want to include a review of my own book, but the regular journal editor insisted ‐...

States that numerous commentators have contended that we live in degenerate, degraded, decadent and soon‐to‐be discontinued times. Arguably a manifestation of “pre‐millennial tension”, this eschatological world‐view seems to be shared by many marketing theorists, for whom the end of...

Three basic approaches to retail institutional change can be discerned in the last 30 years. The first contends that institutional evolution is a function of developments in the socio‐economic environment. The second argues that change occurs in a cyclical fashion. The third considers...

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,...

Purpose – The purpose of this commentary is to summarise developments in the science of serendipity and urge marketers to pay more attention to the incorrigible incalculability of commercial life. Design/methodology/approach – Explains how luck is a crucial component of business success and...