Making emerging phenomena a research priority

Abstract

Almost five decades ago, Phil Kotler published an intriguing article entitled “The Future of the Computer in Marketing” (Kotler1970). Eugene Kelly, Editor of theJournal of Marketingat that time, included Kotler’s article in a Special Issue that also featured contributions by several leading marketing scholars (e.g., John Howard, Paul Green, Robert Ferber, and others). From the temporal vantage point of 1970, the exploratory positioning of Kotler’s article appears completely understandable—after all, the first computer with integrated circuits had appeared just a few years prior, and the use of computing technology in organizations was still in its infancy. Nevertheless, reading Kotler’s article nearly five decades after its publication, I do admire the bold, broad-brush strokes with which he discussed a number of significant changes that were worthy of attention. With some degree of speculative flourish, he noted that the “marketing executive is headed toward a brave new world of instant information and sophisticated decision models” (Kotler1970, p. 14).