The Rhetoric and Reality of Marketing: An International Managerial Approach

Citation

Baines, P. (2004), "The Rhetoric and Reality of Marketing: An International Managerial Approach", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 38 No. 5/6, pp. 720-722. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090560410529303

Philip Kitchen's edited text is one of very few texts to challenge the actual use of marketing. What's even more refreshing about this text is that it considers how marketing is being applied in several different overseas markets. This makes the text unique. It is not a traditional international marketing textbook in that sense. If it was, it would be discussing ad nauseam the so‐called standardisation‐adaptation dilemma, market selection and market entry methods and other commonly considered international marketing concepts. Instead, it focuses on the way in which marketing is used, typically through a dual case study device (one case illustrates “correct” marketing practice, the other “incorrect” practice), in various countries with some outline of how the country context impacts upon marketing philosophy and particularly application. This is also a useful feature.

The word “rhetoric” is said to originate from the Middle English rethorik, from Middle French rethorique, from Latin rhetorica,and from Greek rhEtorikE, and literally means the art of oratory. It denotes the action of speaking, particularly persuasively. The Merriam‐Webster Dictionary (2003) defines it thus:

1: the art of speaking or writing effectively: as a: the study of principles and rules of composition formulated by critics of ancient times b: the study of writing or speaking as a means of communication or persuasion

2a: skill in the effective use of speech b: a type or mode of language or speech; also: insincere or grandiloquent language

3: verbal communication: discourse

It is perhaps the second definition that Kitchen is using in this text: to denote insincere or grandiloquent language often used to affirm a company's marketing credentials without the hard work necessary in really orienting a company towards customers' needs. In some ways, the text suggests that marketing is often used inside organisations as a kind of “business propaganda” to chase profitability and reputational enhancement. Frequent assignation to rhetoric of a negative connotation, of devious persuasion (much worse than insincere!) or even propagandist discourse is common parlance and yet no such connotations are illustrated in the dictionary definition outlined above. So, the title is perhaps somewhat clichéd.

Rhetoric and reality constantly seem to be coupled in a negative sense confirming the frequent assumption, by many, that rhetoric and reality are mutually exclusive categories. They are not. Rhetoric is a persuasive device but sometimes people need persuading because they cannot see the wood for the trees, they do not always know their own minds. When they do know their own minds, they sometimes change them so quickly that an organisation and its marketers simply cannot keep up. What's a marketer to do in these circumstances, when the customer is fickle? The book never really considers this conundrum.

Nevertheless, it considers much else. The style of writing is generally conversational and the chapters generally flow well into each other. It takes a critical perspective on marketing application, discussing how relational marketing has been considered since the 1950s in Britain and is no “new” fad; rather it is a re‐hashed retro perspective. The text considers marketing practice in various chapters in France, Britain, Cyprus, New Zealand, South Korea, Malaysia, Bulgaria and India. In the chapter on marketing in Britain, the author talks about a movement from marketing to societing, an interesting notion. Presumably, since corporate social responsibility is the latest fad in UK marketing, this perhaps infers that although lots of people are talking about it, few are actually doing it to any great degree (see Adkins, 2000). When discussing Cyprus, the author discusses how customer satisfaction cannot be achieved in an atmosphere of “corporate restructuring and staff turbulence” (p. 62). The chapter outlining New Zealand's movement from a protectionist economy to one of the most unregulated markets in the world is very interesting reading. The author of the chapter on Malaysia outlines “how service and sales processes need to be integrated [and] marketing processes need to be individualised”. There then follows a chapter on Bulgaria and its movement from state and communist‐controlled market to free market within Europe. The detailed description of its decline after Perestroika and Glasnost and the collapse of the Soviet Union indicate how resilient this economy became and how quickly, comparatively, it has shifted to some degree of market‐orientation. The chapter on India also highlights some interesting factors of how the country context affects marketing practice, indicating how in many cases traditionally successful fast moving consumer goods marketers are not always successful overseas. The example used is Kelloggs, who failed to get Indian consumers to eat their cornflakes in large volumes because Indian milk is often warm rather than cold (as served in most Western markets) and this makes the flakes soggy, more quickly.

It is useful to consider whether or not, in my view, the text will satiate its intended audience. But to be honest, I'm not so sure who the text is aimed at! Is it practitioners or academics or both? If it is academics, then I think that perhaps the book needs to consider in greater detail what hypotheses arise from the qualitative case studies and how these can be tested in future research. Kitchen does the former but not the latter. However, I suspect the text was not intended purely for academics. If it is aimed at the global business person, then it has a far readier audience in my view. It is peppered throughout with some interesting insights and is written to outline that the world is essentially a patchwork quilt of markets, that there is no magic formula for marketing success, which is often prescribed through rhetoric from within the organisation by top management, and that successful marketers make major efforts to understand the customer and not just hit customer orientation on occasion, through happenchance, every now and again.

Overall, then, an interesting take on marketing, using other countries' different circumstances and stages of development to highlight that, in order to achieve a marketing orientation, a company must continuously mine customer needs.