Academic and practitioner theories of marketing

The relationship between the marketing academy through the conduct of marketing scientific research and marketing practice has been at the centre of a series of debates throughout the 1980s and carried on into the early 1990s. The main outcome of these debates has been a heightened attention to academic and practitioner orientations to marketing research, while conspicuously leaving unexplored how both academics and practitioners theorize upon their observations as well as deal with, evaluate and use marketing theory. An extended example illustrates the divergent orientations to the development and use of marketing theory by academics and practitioners.