Understanding Influence of Marketing Thought on Practice: an Analysis of Business Journals Using Textual and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) Analysis

Abstract

Several calls have made to understand the influence of marketing thought on practice (Rust et al. 2004). Practice includes practitioners who mostly use concepts and frameworks (general practice) and who mostly use quantitative models (quantitative practice). This paper compares the relative influence of marketing thought compared to other disciplines and uncovers seminal marketing thoughts that have influenced both general and quantitative practice. Using topic modeling procedures on 94 years of Harvard Business Review, 46 years of Sloan Management Review, and 47 years of Management Science, this paper illuminates the evolution of the influence of marketing thought over time.