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Reflections of an Activist Editor

Joel B. Cohen is Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, University of Florida (e-mail: joel.cohen@warrington.ufl.edu). My appointment as Journal of Public Policy & Marketing (JPP&M) editor (Fall 2002–Fall 2006, with some further carryover of articles) was a break from tradition, and it also surprised friends and colleagues that I would be interested in this position. It was a break from tradition in that I was never primarily associated with marketing and society or public policy in my research, teaching, or organizational activities. Therefore, because my background was highly unusual and it so strongly influenced what I tried to accomplish as editor, I think it may be useful to weave these threads together. A very smart and highly cited marketing science professor once defined marketing for me. It was, in his view, everything the firm did to move the demand curve up and to the right, typically in the high-stakes world of competitive warfare. To inquire how this jibed with platitudes about providing value to consumers, not to mention society as a whole, would merely have led to either a wink or a grimace, as in “How naive can you be?” Of course, given his extensive economics background, I might have received the usual lecture about revealed preference and the circular reasoning that the buyer’s behavior (in which even being hoodwinked is ignored in the short run and only reflects negatively on marketers in the long run) proved the value of the offering. Perhaps business school professors should explain that more clearly to the people whose houses have been foreclosed on because they bought cleverly marketed mortgages featuring minimum (i.e., partial interest only) monthly payments with the option to refinance in a few years (while unaware that this would mean a much higher balance and possibly a much higher interest rate). In truth, I don’t consider myself naive, which is probably one reason my academic career followed the path it did. I never imagined convincing myself that academic achievement was linked to explaining the nuances of how marketers could actually increase the number of consumers who would be willing to pay more for the mere appearance of higher quality or vague promises of a “new and improved you.” Practitioners seeking masters of business administration degrees (MBAs) who returned to leading institutions of higher learning to master this craft were never of much interest to me—nor I to them. So, what did intrigue me enough about this field to enter it and, many years later, to become editor of JPP&M? What did I hope to achieve in that role, and how did I go about it?