Factors affecting the study of important marketing issues: Implications and recommendations

Academic research in marketing has produced many useful insights and tools over the years. Lately, however, an increasing number of scholars have voiced concern that much of the current academic research is not particularly useful. We explore reasons why this may be the case, and offer a set of recommendations to address them. We first identify three general factors that must be present in order for academics to develop important marketing insights: (i) awareness of important marketing issues, (ii) ability to address these issues, and (iii) motivation to address them. Using this as a framework, we identify several variables that may be reducing the likelihood of our studying important marketing issues. These variables suggest actions that we may take to increase the likelihood of our producing important marketing insights and tools.