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INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN BUSINESS

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Marketing Research Contemporary Themes and Trends

Mohammadreza Haji-Basri
School of Management and Information System Victoria University PO Box 14428, Melbourne, Victoria 800, Australia

Abstract To discuss the direction for future of research in marketing discipline it is imperative to examine the development of research in marketing in the past years. The purpose of this paper is to identify the contemporary research themes published in three leading marketing journal in order to contribute to the current debate on the future direction of marketing research. For doing do 1322 research articles in Journal of Marketing, Marketing Science, and Journal of Marketing Research between 2000 and 2009 are analysed using content analysis method. The paper reports the main research themes and research methods inherent in the 1322 published papers. KEYWORD: META ANALYSIS, RESEARCH THEME, MARKETING TRENDS 1. Introduction What are the underlying research themes in contemporary marketing research? What is the direction of marketing discipline in future? To answer to these questions we need to understand where we have come from. Doing so paves the way for this challenging task of identifying the direction and trends in future of marketing discipline. Within the context of marketing diversity of themes, procedures have employed which contributed to theory and practice of marketing. With regard to marketing research several studies have already contributed to this endeavour. Reviewing the findings of these studies shows how marketing research has unfolded and developed over last decades. Theme diversification contributes to the understanding of marketing phenomena and the development of marketing theory and practice. In terms of personal career advancement, this would be of high importance for academics to know which themes are most likely to be the winners and losers in terms of publication potential, significance and academic standing. Therefore it would be temping and intellectually interesting to review the literature which intends to identify the main research themes and trends in marketing research. This study provides a review of the major trends in marketing over last decade and its trend in future direction. Like any other discipline, marketing is a process. Therefore, it would be of great help to understand the potential significance of each individual research efforts to the whole. To discuss the direction for future of research in marketing it is imperative to examine the development of research in marketing in the past years. A serious challenge that marketing discipline is encountering is what was clearly elaborated by Reibstein et al. (2009, p 2):

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there is an alarming and growing gap between the interests, standards, and priorities of academic marketers and the need of marketing executives operating in an ambiguous, uncertain, fast changing, and complex market space. This has gone beyond the familiar dilemma of academic research pitted against practical relevance. Our contention is that this divergence has become detrimental to the field. In an analysis of 30 years (1978 to 2007) of publishing data from five major marketing journals, Yadav (2010) showed that conceptual articles are declining despite repeated calls for more emphasis on this form of scholarship. Yoo et al. (2011) reviewed the literature on hospitality research using four hospitality journals on the topical areas and research methods and discovered a notable trend for hospitality marketing research. Lehmann et al. (2011) investigated the level of analytical rigor and relevance in articles published in four major marketing journals. They argued that while rigor is desirable, other characteristics, such as relevance, communicability, and simplicity have been downplayed, to the detriment of the marketing discipline. This study makes an attempt to profile all research conducted in three major marketing journals between 2000 and 2009. The analysis provides the marketing audience with an overview of research published in three top marketing journals, helping them understand the trends, the various topics considered worthy of research. This study aims to address the following question: What are the most often investigated topics in marketing and what are their trends over a ten year period.

The rest of the paper is organised as follows. In the next section, the research theme used in this study is discussed. Then the results of the study will be presented. This will be followed by discussion and conclusion. 2. Methodology Three leading marketing journals have been selected. They are Journal of Marketing, Marketing Science, and Journal of Marketing Research which all have long tradition in marketing. They started publication in 1936, 1982, and 1964, respectively. The selected three journals are from top ranked marketing journals based on the study of Lehmann (2005). Also Yadav (2011) used the same journals to examine the trend of conceptual articles in marketing discipline. An extensive content analysis of past issues of these journals is conducted in this paper. Access to the full text version of the articles was obtained via ProQuest database. The coverage of ten years allowed us to analyse a substantial period of marketing research. Therefore all articles between 2000 and 2009 were selected, a total of 1332 articles. The editorial comments, book reviews, and discussion notes were excluded. Each article was carefully examined to capture the relevant data. While different pieces of information were recorded for each article the research themes is the main focus of the current paper.

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2.1. Research Theme

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To finalize a list for research theme the previous similar studies were reviewed as shown in Table 1.
Study Area of focus Total number of themes Time period Number of Journals covered Number of articles covered Major Findings

Bush and Grant (1994)

Sales Force

18

1980-1992

358

More rigorous and scientific research on sale field The existence of limited diversity in strategies, metrics, and methods in marketing discipline.

Dahlstrom et al. (2008)

Marketing Practice 12

1986-1990 1996-2000

844

Yadav (2010)

Conceptual articles 22

1978-2007

1047

Decline in conceptual articles. High portion of conceptual articles on management, planning, and strategy

Yoo et al. (2011)

Hospitality

18

2000-2009

570

Consumer behaviour, and e-marketing as most research topics; survey and descriptive analysis as most used data collection method and analysis data, respectively.

Table 1 Major Studies on Marketing Research Themes

Bush and Grant (1994) examined the content of 13 years of sales force research in four marketing journals to identify the direction in which authors, editors, and reviewers were taking the field of sales force management. They found that the sales force research was becoming a more rigorous and scientific field of study. In another study Dahlstrom et al. (2008) provided a conceptual framework of diversity among strategies, measures, and methods employed in marketing research by analysing 844 studies published in two marketing journal between 1986-1990 and 1996-2000. Also Yadav (2010) examined all conceptual articles published in five marketing journals between 1978 and 2007 and found a significant decline in conceptual articles during the period. Yadav (2010) also found the management, planning, and strategy were the most researched research topics among conceptual articles. Yoo et al. (2011) used 18 topical areas to investigate hospitality marketing research between 2000 and 2009 in four journals. They found customer behaviour, emarketing, and service management as top ranked research topics in hospitality marketing. According to Yoos et al. (2011) findings attention towards customer behaviour, market segmentation/ positioning/targeting, market strategy/management/performance, and pricing/revenue/yield management subjects increased considerably between 2000 and 2009. In terms of research method Yoo et al. (2011) found that survey and secondary data are widely employed data collection methods. For the present study research themes of the previous studies (see Table 1)
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were used, modified and in some cases, combined. As a result, 21 themes were used as a basis for analysis. For example different researchers examined various aspects of branding such as brand valuation, brand preference, brand management, and brand value. In the present study, all brand related themes were combined into one theme as Branding. This helped achieve higher level of consistency. Unlike Yoos study (2011) advertising and promotion are two distinct themes in this study. Similar to Yoos (2011) work if a theme was researched from the companys point of view instead of the consumers, it would then fall under the theme of Management, and Planning. In case of more than one theme researched in an article the main focus of the article was considered as research theme. Therefore, instead of focusing on specific domain of marketing such as hospitality or sales force and also instead of concentrating on specific type of research such as conceptual articles, in the present study the research covers all articles published in all domains of marketing. Also the 10 years period was broken into half (2000-2004 and 2005-2009) in order to examine how the practise of marketing has changed over the two periods. While the keywords and abstract can provide some information regarding the articles theme, referring to the abstract is not always accurate (Palvia et al. 2004). Therefore, along with abstract and keywords each article was subjected to throughout review to extract the research theme. 3. Results All articles were coded over a period of twelve months. A total of 1332 articles were reviewed. 474 (35.6%) articles came from JMR. 387 (29%) articles came from JM and 471(35.4%) from JM. Table 2 presents the number of articles by journal and year.
Journal Journal of Marketing Research Journal of Marketing Marketing Science Total 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Total

39 23 22 84

39 25 26 90

36 28 25 89

34 30 24 88

39 38 46 123

50 47 47 144

59 41 64 164

58 47 57 162

55 51 81 187

65 57 79 201

474 387 471 1332

Table 2 Marketing Research Articles by Journal and Year

3.1.

Research Theme

For assessing the research themes, the normal count approach was used. For each article one keyword was extracted. To determine the research theme, the introductory sections of each article such as abstract, keywords, Introduction/Literature Review, and Theoretical Background were examined. There were some studies that could not be classified in accordance to the proposed 21 themes (86 or 6.5%). These studies were classified as others. Table 3 shows the frequency, percentages and the order of research themes during the study period. Overall, Consumer Behaviour, Management and Planning, and Pricing were the three themes where the most research has been conducted.

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Theme Consumer Behaviour Management, and planning Pricing Market Function/Strategy New Product Development Others Branding Electronic marketing/Information technology Research methodology Theory and philosophy of science Advertising Sales(promotion/Management) Distribution Customer Satisfaction Legal, political, and economic issues Ethics and social responsibility Services Loyalty Value Creation Retailing International and comparative Total Table 3 Number of Articles by Research Theme Frequency 161 157 99 96 92 86 84 71 70 62 57 56 44 37 34 30 29 21 20 13 13 1332 Percent 12.1 11.8 7.4 7.2 6.9 6.5 6.3 5.3 5.3 4.7 4.3 4.2 3.3 2.8 2.6 2.3 2.2 1.6 1.5 1.0 1.0 100.0

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Table 4 shows the research themes changed over two five year periods of 2000-2004 and 2005-2009 for all and individual journals. Comparing the two periods shows that total articles published in all journals increased by 81 percent (from 474 to 858 articles). During these periods Retailing, Customer Satisfaction, and Ethics and Social Responsibility increased significantly with 450, 329, and 229 percent respectively. It indicates that the mentioned themes attracted the researchers attention in recent years. International and comparative analysis with 38 percent decline and Value Creation with 18 percent decline were themes with the least attention among researchers. Journal of Marketing: As it is shown in Table 5 Theory and philosophy of science, Customer Satisfaction, and Loyalty are among themes with largest increased in terms of the number of articles within two periods. Yadav (2010) argue that the decline of conceptual articles has weaken the theoretical core of marketing discipline In Yadavs study the number of conceptual articles had been consistently declining between 1989 and 2007 (from 34.56 percent in years 1989-1992 to 6.7 percent in 2003-2007). However, the findings of the present study reveal that the Journal of Marketing has made a significant change in focusing on theoretical articles in recent years. During the same periods International and comparative analysis experienced 67 percent decrease. Journal of Marketing Research had the lowest increase (53 percent) in articles published in two periods. Overall, Consumer behaviour, Pricing, and Branding are the most researched themes over 10 years period. The themes with the highest increase in the number of articles are Retailing, Legal, Political, and economic issues and Consumer Behaviour. However, Loyalty and International Marketing and Comparative Analysis declined by 33 and 50 percent respectively.

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Marketing Science has come about because of the development of a critical mass of scholars devoted to the study of relationships central to marketing using methods of ever increasing power and data of ever increasing scope, detail, and variety (Bass, 1993). Marketing Science had the largest increase in terms of articles published between 2000 and 2009 with (129 percent). During 2000-2004 the most researched themes were Management and Planning, Pricing, and other themes. These themes remain as top three themes in 2005-2009. Table 5 reveals that several themes have received very limited or no attention, while a few topics have received much attention during the study period. One reason for relative lack of attention could be that there are some specific journals devoted to such themes. For instance, international marketing received limited attention (13 articles in total). This might be due to the general tendency among researchers to consider international or regional journals devoted to international issues such as European Journal of Marketing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, or International marketing Review. 4. Conclusions and implications The research trends were identified in three leading journals: Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research and Journal of Marketing between 2000 and 2009. Based on a detailed analysis of the publications during these years the subject areas most often investigated were determined. The results indicate that Consumer Behaviour, Management, and Planning, Pricing, Market Function/Strategy, and New Product Development were the five most popular research themes within these years. The five themes consisted of approximately 45.4 percent of reviewed articled for this study. Consumer behaviour was a theme that attracted attention of most researchers. This is aligned with previous studies (e.g. Lewis, 2005; Yoo et al., 2011). The finding indicates that the lack of theory development still remains. While the findings show that marketing practice is moving toward more rigorous research, there should be a balance between rigor and relevance of marketing research (Yadav, 2010; Lehmann et al., 2011).

There are some limitations in this study. Firstly, this analysis is made of the studies conducted in the 10 year period. This compilation should be considered as indicative and not an authoritative declaration. The analysis excludes those studies that have been published in other journals during the period of our analysis. Secondly, for ranking of research themes the normal count approach was used. It is also worth noting that just the frequencies of research themes were reviewed and not the importance and significance of research articles. The significance and the impact of articles were not assessed in our analysis. The findings of this research would lead to a broader understanding of marketing research by both academics and practitioners in the entire marketing community. Furthermore, our findings have implications for researchers, journal editors and reviewers.

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JOM 20052009 40 5 10 42 4 8 6 16 7 5 1 11 8 3 13 15 7 15 23 1 3 243 JMR 20052009 50 13 6 18 2 5 24 20 14 10 2 1 15 16 10 25 4 4 21 8 19 287

Themes Consumer behaviour Legal, political, and economic issues Ethics and social responsibility Management, planning Retailing Distribution Pricing New Product Development Sales promotion/management Advertising International and comparative analysis Services Theory and philosophy of science Research methodology Electronic marketing/ Information technology Branding Loyalty Customer Satisfaction Market Function/Strategy Value Creation Others Total

20002004 21 2 2 21 0 5 6 13 12 4 3 8 1 2 9 11 1 2 15 1 5 144

Change 2000(%) 2004 90 150 400 100 400 60 0 23 -42 25 -67 38 700 50 44 36 600 650 53 0 -40 69 20 5 4 10 0 3 17 15 6 9 4 1 17 17 7 15 6 4 16 9 2 187

Change 2000(%) 2004 150 160 50 80 200 67 41 33 133 11 -50 0 -12 -6 43 67 -33 0 31 -11 850 53 7 3 1 22 2 3 17 13 7 6 1 1 9 10 10 4 1 1 8 1 16 143

MS 20052009 23 6 7 44 5 20 29 15 10 23 2 7 12 22 22 14 2 11 13 0 41 328

All Journals Change 20002005(%) 2004 2009 229 100 600 100 150 567 71 15 43 283 100 600 33 120 120 250 100 1000 63 -100 156 129 48 10 7 53 2 11 40 41 25 19 8 10 27 29 26 30 8 7 39 11 23 474 113 24 23 104 11 33 59 51 31 38 5 19 35 41 45 54 13 30 57 9 63 858

Change (%) 135 140 229 96 450 200 48 24 24 100 -38 90 30 41 73 80 63 329 46 -18 174 81

Table 4 the Research Theme by Journal and Year

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