Whither Marketing and Public Policy Research? or Has Public Policy and Marketing Come of Age?

Journal of Public Policy & Marketing

Will we wither or thrive? The title of this article is not designed to be facetious but instead a guide for the remainder of this modest contribution. To the first point, our survival as a subdiscipline of marketing often is unclear. Consider the history of marketing and public policy research and discussions in our sister publication Journal of Marketing. The number of articles (not including the recurring public policy section that was a part of the original charge but was discontinued) on topics of consequence to marketing and public policy researchers stayed relatively constant through the 1930s and 1940s, then dropped slightly but leveled off until the end of the 1980s, and became a trickle from 1990 forward at a miniscule 3%. Of course, this period coincides with the American Marketing Association's (AMA's) acquisition of Journal of Public Policy & Marketing (JPP&M) and is likely an implicit decision by a series of editors that there was a place for such work outside the generalist journals. However, an indirect consequence was the relegation of our scholarship to fewer outlets with “top journal” status, sending a not-so-subtle signal to doctoral students and junior faculty to stay away from this work until well past tenure.