MKX4050

Marketing theory ( 6 points, SCA Band 2, 0.125 EFTSL)

Leader: Professor Mike Ewing

Offered:
Caulfield First semester 2006 (On-campus)

Synopsis: Some say marketing has 'borrowed' excessively from other disciplines (from both within and outside the social sciences). As a result, home-grown theories are less common in marketing as they are in management, economics, or sociology - for example. Unlike the Academy of Management Review, marketing does not have a dedicated theory journal. Notwithstanding, there is ample opportunity for the marketing discipline to consolidate and then advance its theoretical boundaries and thereby grow in both stature and rigour. This unit will equip graduate students with the necessary skills to conduct scholarly research that will legitimately advance the boundaries of marketing knowledge.

Objectives: The aim of this unit is to provide graduate research students with relevant knowledge pertaining to theory development and application in scholarly research within the marketing discipline. The unit is designed to enable students to understand how to draw on existing theory to understand marketing phenomena, and how to advance marketing theory through well-designed empirical research. Specifically, to critically explore the discipline's theoretical foundations, trace the evolution of the literature and identify gaps in the extant knowledge base. Upon successful completion of this unit students will: + Be able to draw on existing theory to understand marketing phenomena. + Be able to identify gaps in the extant knowledge base. + Be familiar with a wide and diverse range of important theories, not only from marketing but from the "mother disciplines" of management, economics, sociology and psychology and from further a field (evolutionary biology, anthropology, linguistics, neurology, etc). + Be able to criticize, compare, contrast and where possible, integrate/synthesize divergent theories. + Be able to generate and articulate theoretically-grounded research propositions, corollaries, axioms, assumptions and generalisations.

Assessment: Assignment (5000 words): 30% + Class presentation proposal (3000 words): 30% + Examination (3 hours): 40%

Contact Hours: 3 hours per week