Marketing-as-practice. Introduction to the special issue

SummaryThis paper introduces the marketing-as-practice (MAP) special issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Management. It outlines the editors’ position, suggesting that there is a need for a stronger focus on MAP in marketing which engages with critical perspectives and opens up a mutually enriching dialogue between MAP and the more established strain of practice research in the strategy literature (SAP). Drawing on practice work in social theory, and building on SAP research, the paper explores practice-orientation in a context of critical perspectives on marketing and a nascent but growing incidence of practice themes in marketing and consumer research. It reviews some published studies in marketing that engage with practice themes, either indirectly or as an explicit practice-research positioning. Finally, the paper introduces the five papers chosen for this special issue. Our aim overall is not to prescribe what MAP should look like, but to try to open up fresh, multi-disciplinary trajectories for practice research in management.