Defining and evaluating ‘Marketing Character’: studying how this phenomenon might be represented within the relevant community of practice

The association between offensive marketing, defensive marketing and marketing personality has been developed over a series of recent journal articles and conference papers – Armannsdottir, Pich and Woodall (2014); Woodall (2004); Woodall (2007); Woodall (2012); and Woodall and Swailes (2009). In each instance, both literal and marketing perspectives on the terms ‘offensive’ and defensive’ are combined to provide a critical perspective on the marketing domain. These articles/papers suggest that many marketers are inclined to practice in ‘offensive’ rather than ‘defensive’ ways, despite this largely normalised ‘offensive’ approach resulting in reputational damage to the profession

Conventionally, when issues of this nature are explored within the academic literature, concepts relating to ethics and/or morality are used as the central theoretical domain for associated enquiry. The articles/papers listed further above, however, suggest that there may be other psycho-social elements at work, and in Woodall (2012) it was hypothesised that an ‘offensive’ inclination may be related more to a juxtaposition of what was termed ’calling and character’; where ‘calling’ relates to a specific, idealised and stereotypical model of the marketers role, and ’character’ suggests this holds an attraction for a particular personality type. More recent work (Armannsdottir, Pich and Woodall, 2014) has drawn on social identity theory and the notion of occupational aesthetics to further explore the nature of, and motivation for, this attraction.

We wish to expand this sphere of study further by undertaking empirical research amongst practicing marketers, firstly by modelling what might be termed ‘marketing personality’ (or, perhaps more correctly, ‘marketing character’) and, secondly, by studying how this phenomenon might be represented within the relevant community of practice. Unlike consumer behaviour, for which there is an extensive/established body of knowledge, marketer behaviour and its impact on the nature and effectiveness of customer engagement is a relatively under-explored area, and a further element of this project will be to help map out, too, the theoretical domain for the ‘marketer behaviour’ concept.