Introduction to the Special Issue on Theory and Practice in Global Marketing (TPGM)

Abstract

Marketing science is an applied science with roots in defining, understanding, explaining, and optimizing phenomena observed in the business world. Currently, substantial technological advances are changing the behavior of consumers and businesses alike. Many substantive issues arise from these changes that require scrutiny and serious investigation from marketing academics to help businesses and policy makers understand and adapt their policies. The recency and continuation of these changes require the cooperation of managers and academic scholars—the former because of their access to latest data and challenges, and the latter because they have the tools and time to analyze these data and to provide new insights for joint discussion. Although these changes increase the need for the cooperation between practice and academia, the opposite has been observed for a longer period. Gupta et al. (2014) assert that academia may be moving away from addressing substantive problems of industry, which threatens to undermine the legitimacy of research at business schools. In 2011, Bernd Schmitt, Don Lehmann, and Sunil Gupta initiated the “Theory and Practice in Marketing (TPM)” conference series to ensure that marketing science intensifies its relationship with practice again. In a recent Journal of Marketing special issue on TPM, Hoffman et al. (2022) express hope that these special issues continue to inspire scholars to take on future research challenges that matter to practice.