The marketing profession needs greater collaboration to answer perennially woolly questions about marketing’s impact on business results

Much recent criticism by academics and practitioners calls for marketers to redefine their roles and activities. However, the common solutions - accountability, back to basics and reinvention - don’t get at the crux of the problem: that marketing lacks a cogent theory explaining customer buying behavior and how to influence it. They also don’t provide particularly helpful guidance for change or improvement.

To combat the marketing function's problems, our author suggests creating a common "learning agenda," a short list of issues that marketers need to address as a profession to improve collective credibility. Marketers must seek fact-based answers to perennially woolly questions about their activities' impact on business results. In an era when all costs are scrutinized, no function can survive in the face of gaping knowledge deficiencies.