Purpose – Retro-marketing is rampant. Throwback branding is burgeoning. Newstalgia is the next big thing. Yet marketing thinking is dominated by the forward-facing discourse of innovation. The purpose of this paper is to challenge innovation’s rhetorical hegemony by making an exemplar-based...

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...

Purpose – Harry Potter is one of the world's most remarkable marketing phenomena. The purpose of this paper is to reveal that consumers interact with the Potter brand in a variety of ways, ways that parallel the four archetypal houses at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to celebrate the manifold contributions made by Michael Thomas, marketing professor extraordinary. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is an exercise in autobiographical memory, coupled with the subjective personal introspective procedures...

Many commentators are contending that modern marketing is in the throes of a “mid‐life crisis”. Although it is appropriate that marketing should be facing such a crisis exactly 40 years after Drucker′s (1954) celebrated statement that “marketing is the distinguishing, the unique...

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...

Success in retailing depends heavily on location. Retailers do better if their shops/stores are situated adjacent to complementary or competitive establishments. This article presents the results of a survey of the micro‐locational perceptions of traders in the centre of a major British City.