Linking business schools and practice in direct marketing: Are we missing an opportunity?
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Alan Tapp is Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Bristol Business School. Alan has published over 35 articles in leading journals and international conferences as well as a best-selling text book. Much of his research has been sponsored by organisations, for example IBM, Christian Dior and The Chartered Institute of Marketing. He is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management. He has undertaken research, consultancy and training for organisations as diverse as the NSPCC, The Institute of Direct Marketing, National Centre for Educational Technology, Business Strategies Ltd, The Royal Mail, The CIM, IBM and Coventry City Football Club. He is the author of ‘Principles of direct and database marketing’, now in its second edition.
Alan Tapp Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QY, UK. Tel: ⫹44 (0)117 344 3439; e-mail: [email protected]
INTRODUCTION Ask a direct marketer at a party what they do and to avoid the opprobrium of junk mail accusations they will probably mutter about interactive marketing or something vague. Asking a marketing academic from a business school the same question leads to equal confusion — ‘lecturer’, they will say. ‘Oh, right’, comes the reply. ‘How is teaching these days?’ For many academics this is rather missing the point. It may not be widely understood but most academic marketers will have a research requirement written into their jobs, while for many it is their major responsibility. It may be a surprise to some practitioners that there are now over 1,000 academic marketers in business schools in the UK, writing and publishing in dozens of journals. Interestingly, many academic marketing researchers are under increasing pressure to get closer to commercial practice. Within academia, direct and database marketing is slowly building a reputation as more than a ‘Cinderella’ subject. Led by a few schools, notably Bristol Business
䉷 Henry Stewart Publications 1741-2447 (2003)
Vol. 11, 2, 107–113
School, Cranfield, University of East Anglia and Surrey, academic interest in the subject has been fuelled by the links of direct and database marketing with relationship marketing and, latterly, customer relationship management (CRM). All of which suggests an increased opportunity for commercial–academic joint projects that will lead to closer working and new knowledge creation. Yet most of the time it is as if managers and academics are on different planets. Both sides seem to occupy a world of their own, barely even acknowledging that the other side exists, let alone that they share many common outcomes. In this paper the author makes the case for the two sides to work together better, then explores the problems that lie behind the lack of cooperation, before finally proposing a process for closer working to the benefit of both sides. THE NEED FOR CLOSER WORKING In the space of a few short years, direct and database marketing (DM) have gone
Database Marketing & Customer Strategy M
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