Guest article by: Roland T. Rust
After World War 2 the major countries of Europe and Asia were largely destroyed, and their economies took years to recover. This created a Golden Age of American business supremacy, and led to the US being the center of the marketing world. As a natural consequence the leading business schools, and all the top marketing journals, were US-centered. The American Marketing Association was the unrivaled center of marketing thought, led by the Journal of Marketing, and then the Journal of Marketing Research. As the marketing field fragmented, the Journal of Consumer Research arose to fill the need for a purely behavioral journal, and Marketing Science arose to the fill the need for a purely quantitative journal. For the last 35 years, most US-based marketing scholars have viewed these four journals as the consensus top four.
Increasingly, however, the marketing world is no longer dominated by the US. Europe, which had only 70% of the US GDP in 1960, had risen to 106% of the US GDP by 2012. Asia has grown even faster. China, for example, went from 12% of US GDP in 1960 to 61% today. The economic expansion has naturally led to a blossoming of non-US business schools and non-US marketing scholarship. In the 1950s and 1960s almost all of the authors in top journals were US-based. By contrast, today it is not unusual for half or more of the articles to have a non-US-based author. This has coincided with the rise of serious academic scholarship in marketing at an increasing number of first European (and now also Asian) schools. In other worlds, the marketing world is no longer US-centric and marketing scholarship is no longer US-centric. So why is the US’ “consensus” journal list still US-centric?
As a US-based scholar with strong connections to Europe, Asia and Australasia, I have a better vantage point than most to parse the global marketing landscape and discern likely future trends. My conclusion is that US hegemony in academic marketing cannot persist. Inevitably the power over marketing organizations and marketing journals will be shared globally, in a way that better reflects the actual distribution of business activity and academic thought leadership. I have often thought that the American Marketing Association made a grave strategic error by keeping “American” as part of its name. If they had re-named themselves more globally, then there was a good chance that they could be the internationally-dominant general marketing organization, much as INFORMS is for quantitative marketing and ACR is for behavioral marketing. Instead, we have seen the European Marketing Academy strengthen in Europe, and several organizations rise up in Asia.
The next obvious step is for the “consensus top four” journals to be joined by a non-US competitor. As Editor-in-Chief of IJRM, the flagship journal of the European Marketing Academy, and universally considered the strongest non-US-based marketing journal, I am admittedly not a disinterested party in this development, but the wind is currently blowing at our back. Only inertia, supported by risk-averse conservatism by leading business schools seeking to maintain their status, and hence, frightened by change, keep the status quo in place. Even then, the status quo seems to be holding primarily in the US. In Europe, IJRM is generally regarded as top-tier, as it is in many other parts of the world. It is inevitable that even the most US-centric business schools in Europe will not long tolerate a consensus top journals list that does not include a European journal. The economic and scholarly power of Europe has become too great. Eventually Asia, which has been following Europe’s development path in marketing academia, will do the same. The same shift happened in reverse in the 20th century, when the Europe-centered science establishment (and journals) gave way to a broader establishment and set of journals that increased the representation by the US.
What are the next steps? First, virtually all non-US schools will shed their inferiority complex and accept the idea of top non-US-based journals (starting with IJRM) being top-tier. This transformation is already well underway in both Europe and Asia, based on an internal survey that we conducted at IJRM. This will eventually force even the most change-averse of the US schools to accept a non-US presence in the consensus top journals list. While IJRM is on the verge of becoming the first non-US-based marketing journal to be globally considered top-tier, it will not be the last. Ultimately Asia will be represented as well. The decreasing market share of the US, economically and academically, will inevitably result in the US owning a smaller market share of the academic organizations and journals at the top of the marketing field. We should all accept the global reality and take off our US-centric glasses.
Ronald T. Rust
Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland, College Park
This article was original posted on ELMAR: http://ama-academics.communityzero.com/elmar?go=6118624
ow true!! This is what we, Europeans, have noticed long time ago. Nice to hear it from a US author. May be just the Nordic school unbalanced this American hegemony (but just for Service Marketing). I sometimes describe the history of Marketing to my students using and reversing Ben Gourion’s moto on Israel: (i.e. Too much history, too little geography). For the case of Marketing as a science. we got too little history (one century) and too much (American) geography.
Let us see this due change.
Best
Martina G.Gallarza