Keynote Speaker

JAN-BENEDICT STEENKAMP 

University of North Carolina at Chapell-Hill, Kenan-Flagler Business School

Collaborating with marketing practitioners to produce cutting-edge academic research: Pitfalls and opportunities

Many thoughtful marketing academics and practitioners have lamented the growing gap between marketing science and marketing practice. It appears that the key success factors to make it into top journals like IJRM, JM or JMR are at cross-purposes with things practitioners care about and find useful.

So, what should one do? To get tenure and to be promoted to full professor, you need toplevel articles, but increasingly, department heads and deans care about business impact. Moreover, much research depends on willingness of companies to provide data and/or funding. While this dilemma is real, I believe that it can be misleading. I will discuss both the pitfalls as well as the opportunities that working with practitioners present to marketing academics. I will elaborate on conditions that have to be met to make it work – conditions that can largely be evaluated beforehand. I will illustrate the various points drawing on my experience having worked with companies for 30 years, which in many cases led to academic publications.

I also believe that since historically, ties between business schools and companies are closer in Europe than in the U.S. and this may be an opportunity for European academics to gain an edge.

Thursday 28 May, 15:30 at the Promotion Hall, Zone D