The Textbook Effect: Conventional Wisdom, Myth & Error in Marketing

Textbooks and Research Journals Conventional wisdom holds that marketing textbooks are based on established marketing concepts. Readers assume that the contents of these books reliably summarize research findings to provide foundational information for students. In what is assumed to be a virtuous and reciprocal relationship, knowledge is generated in research, published in journal articles, and then collected and summarized in textbooks. The process sometimes is reversed when journal articles appeal to textbooks for authority. However, the relationship between texts and research is not always virtuous. For example, in their study of marketing texts, Armstrong and Schultz (1993) collected 566 normative statements about pricing, communications, and product or distribution decisions that were not supported by empirical evidence. Nine of the statements were judged to be "nearly correct" when their wording was reversed! In this review, I explore the ambivalent and often perverse relationship between knowledge generating (research) and knowledge disseminating (textbooks) activities in a process I call the "textbook effect." The textbook effect refers to (1) the embedding of old, defunct, unsubstantiated theories in textbooks and (2) the effect such embedding has on practice and research. Although my point is a general one, for the sake of illustration I take up a particular case of the impact of the textbook effect on the body of research referred to as "fear appeals."