This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by O’Shaughnessy, J. Articles by O’Shaughnessy, N. J. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Postmodernism and Marketing: Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

Columbia University; Judge Institute of Management Studies, Cambridge Universityjoshua2983{at}comcast.net

Nicholas Jackson O’Shaughnessy

Keele Universityn_o_shaughnessy{at}hotmail.com

Postmodernism, as a philosophy and a set of doctrines, has made incursions into marketing. The incursion into marketing has given postmodernism visibility among marketing academics. This article argues that there is a need for a critical appraisal of postmodernism’s potential contribution to marketing. What has been written so far on postmodernism as applied to marketing tends to be peripheral to the key doctrines of postmodernism. In setting out the postmodernist claims, this article argues that while some of these claims may be defensible, most are not. Insofar as the influence of postmodernism has been benign or progressive, it is because it has dramatized and intensified criticism already under way of the claim that the methodology of the physical sciences represents the only way to certain knowledge. The downside of postmodernism is an untenable extension of this insight that would, if adopted by marketing, be highly dysfunctional.

Journal of Macromarketing, Vol. 22, No. 1, 109-135 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/027467022001010


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				M. Tadajewski Quaker Travels, Fellow Traveler?: Wroe Alderson's Visit to Russia during the Cold War Journal of Macromarketing, September 1, 2009; 29(3): 303 - 324. [Abstract] [PDF]

				M. Tadajewski Remembering motivation research: toward an alternative genealogy of interpretive consumer research Marketing Theory, December 1, 2006; 6(4): 429 - 466. [Abstract] [PDF]