Abstract

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to analyse the central characteristics of tacit knowledge in marketing decision making. Little empirical or theoretical work in marketing specifically addresses this area.
Design\methods: The study reports on a series of in depth interviews with marketing managers, using discourse analysis as a method of framing their accounts of practice.
Findings: Managers in this study offer up a rich alternative discourse to much current mainstream theory in marketing. Key findings indicate that tacit knowledge characteristics in marketing are intersubjective, intuitive and locally situated.
Practical implications: The tacit dimension in organisations is not generally replicable and marketing knowledge production is alternatively viewed as locally contingent phenomena. An improved understanding of the content and central characteristics of tacit knowledge suggests that marketing theory has to be opened up to a plurality of perspectives.
Originality\value: This paper makes an original contribution to marketing epistemology by attempting to unravel the core characteristics of tacit knowledge and in the process, questions the dominant normative perspective found in the majority of marketing textbooks. The key challenge for theory generators and textbook writers is to attempt to make much of the tacit knowledge in marketing generally more accessible.