2 - The Ethnographic Classics

Summary

Is there a unique ethnographic theory of marketing? Or, put otherwise, if we study marketing through ethnography can we develop new ways of understanding it? According to Wang, an ethnographer who observed marketing action in the Beijing office of one of the world's most successful creative advertising companies, ‘theory is inextricably linked to methodology’ (2010: 305). Ethnographic studies should, in other words, support a specific theory of marketing. Here, I want to focus on the things we have learned about marketing action by looking through an ethnographic lens.

To do so, I describe what I consider to be the three classic ethnographic studies which, despite their different empirical contexts and concerns, set the foundation for an ethnographic theory of marketing action. These are studies reported by Rosen (1985), Moeran (2005; 2006; 2007; 2009), and Alvesson (1994; 1998; 2001). Collectively, they look at marketing from the peculiar, surprising, and unexpected action witnessed in marketing organizations – not academic definitions and industry hype. They show us that, alongside doing their actual jobs, marketing organizations and individual marketing workers spend much of their time trying to ‘convince themselves, as well as customers, that they have something to offer’ (Alvesson, 1994: 544). These are actions that are so ingrained in marketing that many marketing workers take them for granted. Perhaps because of this, they are almost completely ignored by most academic marketing theory too. The experiences of the people doing marketing ‘have been given poor attention both in research and marketing textbooks’ (T. Nilsson, 2019: 233).

To explain these peculiarities, the classic ethnographic studies draw on a range of sociological traditions. Rosen (1985) emphasizes the discursive and ideological nature of marketing action, Moeran (2005; 2006; 2007; 2009) emphasizes the theatrics of self- promotion, and Alvesson (1994; 1998; 2001) emphasizes power and organizational politics. However, on closer inspection, there is a structural- functionalist view of marketing action implicit in this body of thinking (see Burrell and Morgan [1979] for a detailed overview of this research paradigm). As we will see at the end of the chapter, although this paradigm is not often linked with ethnographic research, nor the theory explicitly discussed in the classic ethnographies of marketing, each of the classic ethnographies explains marketing action through the uncertain nature of marketing work and its implications for the relationships between marketing organizations, their clients, and marketing workers.