Inside Marketing: Practices, Ideologies, Devices

In comparison to the impressive amount of resources, time, and energy going into researching the inner life of consumers, a rather minor effort has been made to study the growing army of economic actors whose work it is to define markets and give shape to the consumer culture as we know it. Furthermore, the results of the work that marketers do are, by definition, highly visible. Indeed, we would suggest that making things visible (in the sense of bringing forward and rendering meaningful and recognizable) through, for example, product design, packaging, display strategies, commercial architecture, branding, advertising, and promotional activities is the raison d'être of marketing. Yet, the visibility of marketing activities contrasts with the relative obscurity of the inner workings of the marketing profession. Indeed, little scholarly work has been directed at investigating the practices, ideologies, and devices of marketing professionals and how “marketing work” is enacted in organizational contexts. This book brings together leading social scientists and business scholars to deliver a systematic attempt to theorize contemporary marketing from the inside out.