Denial at the top table: status attributions and implications for marketing

Senior marketing management is seldom represented on the Board of Directors nowadays, reflecting a deteriorating status of the marketing profession. We examine some of the key reasons for marketing's demise, and discuss how the status of marketing may be restored by demonstrating the value of marketing to the business community. We attribute marketing's demise to several related key factors: narrow typecasting; marginalisation and limited involvement in product development; questionable marketing curricula; insensitivity towards environmental change; questionable professional standards and roles; and marketing's apparent lack of accountability to CEOs. Each of these leads to failure to communicate, create or deliver value within marketing. We argue that a continued inability to deal with marketing's crisis of representation will further erode the status of the discipline both academically and professionally.