High minds and low deeds: on being blind to creativity in strategic marketing

In mapping out the twists and turns of the evolving research agenda in strategic marketing, some of the diversity and energy brought to discussions of process and practice in the area, has been captured in recent discussions. This paper sets out to bring the idea of ‘managerial judgement’ to those discussions. In doing so, it draws on work which argues with some foresight that there is a need to examine processual aspects of marketing management and develop appropriate analytical tools for achieving this. The paper considers the value of managerial judgement as such an analytical tool and finds that it provides a useful way of focusing on marketing managers’ creative accomplishments, rather than their rational limitations in the face of inadequate or inconsistent information. In doing so, it reasserts the value of the word ‘policy’ in marketing, at a time when it has almost disappeared from our vocabulary to be replaced by the word ‘strategy’, with its connotations of instrumentality, functionality and linear rationality. It is argued that the word ‘policy’ conveys the notion of strategy making as an inherently political process which is enacted in the face of uncertainty through exercising judgement.