The depiction of marketing and marketers in the news media

Robert Cluley

25 citations0/0 files storedEuropean Journal of Marketing

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Marketing and Advertising Strategies Media Studies and Communication Corporate Identity and Reputation

Abstract

Purpose In an effort to explain the high level of scepticism and distrust towards marketing and marketers, this paper aims to explore how marketing practice and practitioners are depicted in the mass media. Design/methodology/approach The paper analyses 6,877 news reports that discuss “marketing” across two one-year time periods from three UK newspapers. A systematic content analysis is presented through N-grams and K-grams, close readings of individual cases and manual coding. Findings The paper finds that the news media cultivates an image of marketing and marketing practitioners as a cost to businesses and something that businesses do to consumers. The study finds that marketers are also presented through a narrow viewpoint. Marketers are depicted as male and tend to be viewed as a source of authority only when speaking on behalf of their organizations in response problems and crises. Research limitations/implications The cultivation effect of mass media is widely accepted among communications scholar, yet its use within marketing research is limited. The paper represents an empirical application of this approach. Practical implications Organizations including the Chartered Institute of Marketing and American Marketing Association have attempted to counteract marketing’s image problem by redefining what marketing means. The results of this study suggest that such attempts are unlikely to work, as the practice of marketing, in particular PR, cultivates a negative image in the media. Social implications The paper explores the relationship between marketing practice and the marketing profession and society. Originality/value The paper demonstrates the utility of cultivation theory and systematic content analyses of media texts. It develops a methodology to examine how professional practice is depicted in mass media.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 25 citations exist upstream.

References

1998Negative information weighs more heavily on the brain: The negativity bias in evaluative categorizations.1997Relations between organizational culture, identity and image 1980The “Mainstreaming” of America: Violence Profile No. 11 2001Corporate identity, corporate branding and corporate marketing ‐ Seeing through the fog 2001Corporate branding and corporate brand performance 1999Brand Management Through Narrowing the Gap Between Brand Identity and Brand Reputation 1998Cultivation Analysis: An Overview 1997Corporate identity: the concept, its measurement and management

Cited by

2023Agencing the digitalised marketer: Exploring the boundary workers at the cross-road of (e)merging markets 2019Zakat Fundraising Strategy: Opportunities and Challenges in Digital Era 2018The construction of marketing measures 2018Marketing (as) rhetoric: an introduction 2025Profit over principles: unveiling the motivating factors behind dark patterns in e-commerce through the lens of agency theory

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.