Beyond Positivism : Investigating Paradigm Diversity in Marketing Studies

Having diverse paradigms is crucial for intellectual development, especially in social sciences such as marketing, in which different perspectives are necessary to comprehend complex social phenomena. Editorials in leading marketing journals show a stance of promoting paradigm diversity; however, a content analysis conducted on papers published in the top eight journals revealed that research based on paradigms other than positivism is still in the minority. To promote multi-perspective intellectual contributions, the study suggests creating socialization opportunities among disciplines, designing doctoral programs that expose students to various paradigms, diversifying faculty, and publicly acknowledging research based on non-dominant paradigms.