Driven to excess? Linking calling,character and the (mis)behaviour of marketers

The news is not good …

This paper opened with a brief and damning commentary on the liability of marketers in the context of the recent, global, economic downturn. It suggested a largely sales-driven approach to the market; a focus on revenue maximized at all costs; and implied a discipline committed to specious and illusory modes of practice – and this is far from a personally determined construction of the issue. Sheth and Sisodia (2005) for example reported on US research, suggesting that 62% of consumers think negatively about marketers, and that only 10% would articulate positively on their merits. Heath and Heath (2008) uncovered evidence of similar mistrust in Portugal. O’Malley and Prothero (2004) earlier identified general suspicion regarding even the most laudable of marketing practices (customer care and loyalty programmes), while later commercial research by Harris International (i-level, 2009) suggests that two out of three people in the United States blame advertising for the recent recession. So far, so bad.

Interestingly, in a recent longitudinal investigation of New Zealanders' attitudes toward the free market philosophy (Lysonski et al., 2003; comparing the years 1986 and 2001), there appeared evidence of a society increasingly more at ease with the general marketing landscape; but while suppliers were perceived to be more aware of their responsibilities in terms of quality, the environment and product legislation, there was continued mistrust of pricing and advertising – areas most likely to be influenced by the marketing manager. Society at large, therefore – in whichever part of the world one might choose – clearly thinks little of the marketer’s propensity to act for the collective good, and the notion of marketer-as-misanthrope continues to pervade the popular view. Even in the organization marketers are viewed with suspicion, Baker and Holt (2004: 557) recently revealing evidence of senior management distrust of ‘unaccountable, untouchable, slippery and expensive’ marketing colleagues; hardly a ringing endorsement for a discipline that, according to Mattson et al. (2006), should be at the heart of corporate strategy. So for marketing, and marketers, the news is not good. Perceived at least partially responsible for a global collapse of confidence in financial markets, and held as malicious, untrustworthy and inept from both sides of the organization/market dyad, they appear less than safe.

For some, though, this parade of knavish disreputability is precisely what makes marketing work, and it continues to inform and reinforce a darkly romanticized view of what our discipline is, and should be. For example much of Stephen Brown’s more recent and managerially focused work, concentrating on a largely ‘one-‘P’’ (promotion, promotion, promotion) approach to marketing (Woodall, 2001), supports this perspective. Eulogizing marketing’s ‘tricksterist credententials', Brown has lauded the exploits of diverse marketing heroes – from P.T. Barnum the circus entrepreneur (Brown, 2001) and, via Elbert Hubbert of the Roycrofters' furniture workshops (Brown, 2006); Roger Ackerley of Fyffes banana fame (Brown, 2000); and even Jesus Christ (Brown and Patterson, 2000) – to IBM’s T.J. Watson (Brown, 2007a) and Ryanair’s ‘headline-grabbing, publicity-stunt pulling’ Michael O’Leary (Brown, 2007b: 3), and has attempted to endear to us the notion of a discipline ‘characterized by exaggeration, by excess, by extremity, by exuberance, by extra, extra, extra’ (Brown 2001: 199–200). But while arguments for an ‘authentic’ and transparently manipulative approach to marketing – especially in the context of a reflexively artful marketplace – have been forcibly made (e.g. Firat and Venkatesh, 1995), there is now a growing sense that consumers in general are not as smart as marketing’s apologists (including this author) have suggested, and that (some of) the postmodern runes may have been incorrectly cast.

A shifting marketing landscape

Critics of the marketing project have for many years, of course, been aware both of marketing’s image problem (a delightful irony) and of society’s potentially countermanding imperatives (see Farmer, 1967, 1977 – would you let your son/daughter marry a marketing woman/man?). Both are conjoined in the context of marketing ethics, and more recently much has been written defining and/or contesting what this might actually be (e.g. Brinkman, 2002; Gaski, 1999; Martin and Johnson, 2008; Mayo and Marks, 1990; Vitell and Hunt, 1990); while concern for the ethical validity of specific marketing practices continues to attract researcher attention (e.g. Kelly and Smith, 2008 – stealth marketing; Borgerson and Schroeder, 2002 – marketing representation; Vikas and Varman, 2007 – selling to vulnerable groups). Except on rare occasions (e.g. Singhapakdi et al., 2008) study concerning the ethical mores of the marketing manager him/herself, though, has concerned itself primarily with ethical behaviour at work, rather than in the marketplace – see, for example, Ferrell and Weaver, 1978; Fritzsche and Becker, 1983; Singhapakdi et al., 1996, 2010 – and has tended to focus on factors influencing ethical behaviour and the extent to which the organization guides or determines managers' actions (e.g. work climate – Deconinck, 2004; institutionalization of ethics – Singhapakdi and Vitell, 2007; ethical sensitization – Marta et al., 2008b). Often, too, concern with the marketer is framed as being incidental to some more central interest, such as cultural/national difference (Karande et al., 2002; Marta et al., 2008a), gender (Daulatram, 2008), or religion (Gibbs and Ilkan, 2008), with outcomes focused more on managerial, rather than market, decision making.

The literature associating marketing and ethics is substantial (for a review see Schlegelmilch and Öberseder, 2010) but the link between the practising marketer and marketing practice is rarely explored. Yet we are presently at a point of unique circumstantial convergence, where an interest in business ethics; damning evidence of continuing marketer indulgence; and calls for marketing to adopt a more defensive (Woodall, 2004; Woodall and Swailes, 2009), advocatory (Lawer and Knox, 2006; Urban, 2005), promise keeping (Grönroos, 2006), virtue-based (Murphy et al., 2007), matriarchal (Scott and Peñaloza, 2006), even humble (Cova, 2005), approach, have combined to identify the need for a different type of marketer – one that is holistically and intuitively suited to the demands of a different type of marketing, where individual values, attitudes and ethics are likely to be as important, if not more, than the ability to plan and execute a promotional campaign. The age of service (Vargo and Lusch, 2008), customer experience (Berry et al., 2002) and word of mouth (Kumar et al., 2007) is clearly upon us, yet there is a sense that marketers are struggling to understand how performance, rather than persuasion and a larger-than-life espousal of the possible, will win out in the longer term.

Right for the job?

For the past decade or so the literature has obsessed on the notion of the ‘right’ customer (e.g. Kumar, 2008; Reichheld, 1996; Rust et al., 2004; Saarksjarvi et al., 2007). Little, however, has been written on reciprocal issues; that is, on where/how we might find the ‘right’ marketer. Ultimately, of course, marketing is a function of the behaviour of marketers, especially of marketing managers. As a professional community marketing managers are self-contained – the academies, professional bodies, and academic literature exert their pull, as do equally trade journals, airport schlock and peer-to-peer networks – all contributing to establish a collective (though infinitely textured) modus operandi that, ultimately, defines how sales and marketing happens in the ‘real’ world: the ‘grand competence’ (Peters et al., 2009) that represents what marketing is and does. The manner in which marketing managers behave, therefore, and the way they interpret the demands placed upon them by both employer and society, are – to a substantial degree – self-determined. From a corporate perspective they may be encouraged toward a specific end, but both strategically and tactically are given scope and latitude to practise in accordance with internally normalized imperatives.

The marketing rhetoric, channelled via the ‘gurus' of the marketing domain, holds that marketers are guided by one overarching credo: the maximization of customer satisfaction (Day, 1994; Jobber, 2010; Kotler, 1972). But to what extent are marketers really committed to the customer cause? Stock and Hoyer (2005) argue that business employees may well often ‘act’ in a preferred manner – that is, demonstrate behavioural, managerial, even theoretical, compliance (Brill, 1994) – but may not possess a natural allegiance, or real enthusiasm, for a particular credo or policy. Bardzil and Slaski (2003) call such allegiance ‘critical internalization’, and suggest that certain attitudes (service orientation, in their case) may be innate. Thus, although uncommitted employees may be able to process certain attitude-level modifiers; profess devotion to a cause; and perform in an apparently appropriate manner, this may only be a temporary or spurious effect. Järlström (2000: 146) cites McDaid et al., who suggest that ‘people differ in the ways they like to use their minds, and…these differences influence the ways people like to work, what motivates them and what satisfies them’. Some 20 years ago Carter (1985: 53) asked,

Are we guilty, perhaps, of not addressing the fundamental question as to whether the marketing personnel we employ…are really right for the job – and not in the sense that they are either efficient or effective or even physically or personally suited, but that the task demanded of them is not in keeping with their preferred way of doing things – a personality which, although capable of being situation-specific, eventually re-asserts itself?

Does marketing, then, both by heritage and design, attract the risk-taker, the hedonist, the ethically ambivalent – and do job advertisements merely reinforce the expectations of those who want to be marketers, rather than target those who might be best at doing it? Are employers, in one respect, recruiting the ‘wrong’ people? And if, indeed, our marketing recruits are inherently ‘hard-wired to the hard-sell’, to what extent will they be able to resist the siren call of consumerist dissipation once the newspapers have moved from the recession to different, more instrumentally urgent, agendas?

Marketing and personality

To further examine this premise we need to understand what it is that determines how/why a particular individual comes to occupy a specific job. The literature suggests there is a tension between the individual finding the job that is best for them, and the employer finding the person best suited to the job to be done. The key task for both is, essentially, to achieve optimum ‘person-environment’ (Carless, 2005), or ‘person-situation’ (Tett and Burnett, 2003) fit, and it is argued that it is ultimately the employees' search for job satisfaction that drives the fitting process (Converse et al., 2004). Thus, a gravitational outcome is hypothesized; one that causes individuals to ‘sort themselves' into jobs for which they are especially suited or find notably attractive (Wilk et al., 1995). As Celmer and Winer (1990: 178) suggest, people ‘search for environments that will let them exercise their skills and abilities, express their attitudes and values'. Schein (1996) argues that we are all in search of one or more ‘career anchors', and that we will continue to search until we find them, while Arvey et al. (cited in Furnham, 2001: 229) suggest there is a certain inevitability that guides the pace and nature of our career trajectory. Ultimately, a person can only be fully satisfied in his/her work if the occupational environment is congruent with the individual’s interests, values and abilities (Thomas et al., 2004) or, and perhaps most importantly, their personality (Brown et al., 1989).

In the same way, though, that there is little written about marketing (as opposed to managerial) ethics, the literature that relates to individual difference (attitude, orientation, personality) in the context of marketing managers is sparse (Woodall and Swailes, 2009). Although there is a substantial body of work (e.g. Chang, 2006; Farrell and Oczkowski, 2009; Franke and Park, 2005; Harris and Fleming, 2005; Sawyerr et al., 2009; Verbeke and Bagozzi, 2002) relating to customer facing, or ‘part-time’ (Gummesson, 1991) marketers – service workers, sales personnel, call centre agents – those who market strategically, or ‘full-time’ appear largely immune to researcher interest. Some commentators (e.g. Ardley, 2005; Brady and Palmer, 2004; Clark, 2000; Coviello et al., 2002; Morgan et al., 1995) have explored marketing manager habits or working preferences, but research associating ‘marketer’ and ‘personality’ is rare – and even in the journal Psychology and Marketing, articles focused on the full-time marketer, and the way that he/she thinks or believes, are uncommon – Forlani et al. (2002) and Weber (2001) being rare exceptions.

The academic canon contains some, but only a few, papers that seriously address marketers from a psychological perspective (e.g. Carter, 1985; Elliot and Margerison, 1977; Hunt and Chonko, 1984; Nordvik, 1996), and in the marketing literature generally, the terms ‘marketer’ and ‘personality’ are far more likely to be aligned with the notion of ‘owning’ or ‘demonstrating’ personality, in much the same way that brands are suggested to have personality (e.g. Aaker, 1997; Arora and Stoner, 2009; Geuens, 2009; Hayes et al., 2006). For example the abstract for a magazine article called ‘Brand Names: The Folks behind the Best Work of 2002’ (Promagazine, 2003) reveals that this item ‘profiles marketing personalities nominated as the “Promo” magazine’s Marketers of the Year for 2002’. Another informs us of a similar piece titled, ‘Makin’ Your Marketing Personality Work for You’ (McPherson, 1996), and yet another (Kucharsky, 2002) – again on annual awards – advises ‘Jaques Nantel’s got personality’. Newlin (2002) discusses ‘marketing with personality’ (give your marketing some ‘oomph’!), and Young (2004) comments on articles written by ‘leading Canadian marketing personalities', while Search Engine College (2009) even lists the top 22 ‘personalities' presently working in the marketing field. Of course, this specific association between ‘marketing’ and ‘personality’ reinforces stereotypical perspectives that presume the overriding importance of personal projection and the primary value of a larger-than-life approach to customer engagement. Roberts and Hogan (2001: 11) refer to this interpretation of personality as ‘the distinct impression a person makes on others' and, intuitively, we associate the ability to ‘make an impression’ as a sign of a good marketer.

The productive orientation

Schultz, II and Holbrook (2009: 125) are withering in their condemnation of the worst excesses of marketing practice – ‘Ways that marketing has been (mis)used to take advantage of…vulnerable consumers are both multifarious and well known – not to mention deplorable’, and it is similarly evident that, perceived as such, marketers are no longer in touch with the mood of the times. Despite this, there is evidence of a continued insistence on bucking the trend, of marketing against the tide. The ‘blogosphere’ for example is already replete with advice on ‘recession marketing’ – how marketers/marketing can survive, succeed in, or exploit a downturn (‘Recession responsible for marketing innovation!’ – Ortiz, 2008). Much of this is stereotypically cynical – for example the CEO of the Association of National Advertisers says, in a series of advisory points to marketers:

We're finally up to the last of the ten strategies on how to bounce back from tough times. My advice to you is to be socially responsible. Do the right thing. Your consumers will notice and reward you for giving back! (Liodice, 2009)

There is, though, according to Fromm (1949), an antidote to all this; for beyond the falsehoods and fabrications that characterize Fromm’s marketing and exploitative characters, there lies another, more ethically assured, way forward. For this, the ‘productive’ character, or personality, must come to the fore:

In productive thinking the subject is not indifferent to his object but is affected by and concerned with it. The object is not experienced as something dead and divorced from oneself and one’s life…on the contrary, the subject is intensely interested in his object, and the more intimate this relation is, the more fruitful is his thinking. (Fromm, 1949: 103)

Note also, that ‘… productive thinking is characterized by objectivity, by the respect the thinker has for his object, by his ability to see the object as it is, not as he wishes it to be’ (Fromm, 1949: 104). And, in these circumstances, ‘Objectivity does not mean detachment, it means respect; that is, the ability not to distort and falsify things, persons and oneself’ (Fromm, 1949: 105). Schultz, II and Holbrook (2009) suggest that marketers and policymakers will only act in non-damaging ways if there are financial incentives to do so; but they also speculate on the possibility of marketers rising to the ‘grand challenge’ of reducing, rather than feeding off, consumer vulnerability. The task, clearly, is to cause organizations to see that fulfilling the long-term needs of society, and achieving the long-term viability of profitable customer/supplier relationships, are mutually supportive endeavours. But organizations, of course, are neither conscious, nor independently coordinated organisms. They are, perhaps too obviously, primarily collections of people, and only when people are ‘productive’, according to Fromm, can the tension between individual and collective (societal and organizational) needs be resolved (Elkind, 1981).

The ‘new’ marketer/conclusion

Surprisingly, given Fromm’s early concerns with post-war consumerism and with ‘homo consumens’ (Fromm, 1966) – a term used to capture the essence of those in thrall to the market, and not dissimilar to Firat and Schultz, II’s 1997 homo consumericus – there is little written about him in the marketing canon. Particular exceptions are articles by Cherrier and Murray (2007) and Shankar and Fitchett (2002), ¹ both of which focus on Fromm’s dichotomous notion of ‘having’ (the self represented via consumption and ownership) and ‘being’ (identity established as a function of social/relational experience), an evolving theme ultimately formalized in Fromm (1979), but based upon earlier perspectives on the acquisitive nature of post-war society which he believed, presciently, would lead ultimately to ‘economic catastrophe’. Shankar and Fitchett (2002) explore this device in the context of a revised form of marketing; a ‘marketing of being’, that promotes the benefits of social over material profit. They suggest that ‘marketing activities must…be designed to facilitate being-ness rather than geared toward the short-term goal of satisfying the motivation and drive to have’ (Shankar and Fitchett, 2002: 513). This requires that marketers face up to the possibility that the market is changing; to the likelihood that consumers are becoming tired of wanting and owning; and that service, experience and the need to be socially responsible are slowly edging out quantity and the continuous lust for more. There is a force field (Lewin, 1997; Thomas, 1985) at play (see Figure 1 ) and marketers are seemingly pushing against the tide.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Force Field Analysis – the Market and Marketing

But, of course, change will not emerge by accident; nor by the exhortations of a critical few. A ‘marketing of being’ will only materialize if marketers themselves believe in the relevance of such a singularity and if, psychologically, they are aligned to these same aspirations, or hold relevant job characteristic beliefs. Similarly, Schultz, II and Holbrook’s (2009: 124) call for marketing to adopt ‘efficacious practices for intervention’ will only materialize if marketers are inclined to accede, and if their personality both allows and encourages this. Fromm identified that, of all his economically derived orientations, the productive personality is unique in its understanding of the ‘being’ mode (Boeree, 2006). To ‘have’ is to be divorced from responsibility and respect, and those who ‘have’ customers cannot possibly understand them. To ‘have’ is both to possess and to use; to collect, to categorize and exploit. Organizations will ultimately recognize that marketing has a social, as well as an organizational, role to play and that, ultimately, it will be in their best interests to seek out, and employ, the ‘right’ sort of employee. In 1987 Gummesson hailed the era of the ‘new’ marketing (Woodall, 2007); and now, perhaps, we are entering an era where ‘productive’ marketing – advanced, practised and promoted by the ‘new’ and productive marketer – might be the most appropriate way of proceeding.

Both in this paper, though, and in Woodall and Swailes (2009), it has been suggested that we know little about how marketing managers view their responsibilities to the customer; to society; to the long-run success of the wider economy; and to theoretically optimizing organizational strategies. We do, though, know much about the customer – how he/she is likely to think and act, and how personalities, proclivities and vulnerabilities might best be manipulated to the organization’s advantage. We term this exploratory discipline ‘consumer behaviour’ (AMA, 2010), an established and comprehensively articulated conceptual domain widely represented through books, conference tracks and journals. What we require now, though, is an equally searching exploration of the marketer, so as to determine how he/she can be understood, educated, selected and trained to ‘fit’ the needs not just of business, but of society too; and how, also, marketer vulnerability – both moral and attitudinal – can be assessed, avoided and/or modified.

An agenda for research

We need, therefore, a means of helping assure that our marketers are psychologically and inherently – not just instrumentally and expediently – oriented toward the spirit of the marketing concept, with the robustness of will to resist the short-term, questionable and effortless solution. And if we regard it necessary to break the cycle of interdependence between vulnerable marketer and vulnerable consumer, it would be naive to expect the latter to exercise restraint on our behalf. Figure 1, above, implies frailty on both sides of the line of equilibrium, but by focusing the bulk of our research activities on one side of the customer/marketing dyad only, we effectively ensure that the balance will always be in favour of those with the knowledge, the power and the inclination to exploit. The behaviour of marketing subjects (including marketing managers) should exercise the inquisitiveness of the marketing academy just as much as the behaviour of its objects; and if marketing is, indeed, to raise its standards and aspirations (Kelly and Smith, 2008; Schultz, II and Holbrook, 2009; Sheth and Sisodia, 2007) then we need, primarily, to identify the characteristics, and people, most likely to bring this to pass. There are, therefore, things we need to know:

How do aspirant marketers perceive the nature and notion of ‘marketing’ as (a) an organizational discipline, and (b) a career opportunity; and what is it that attracts individuals to the job of marketing manager?