If marketers had found no classificatory approaches readymade in the behavioral sciences, how would they have construed “the consumer” for purposes of classification? In this paper, I argue that we should select our approaches to classification in the light of the task at hand. Classification systems for persons — as opposed to behaviors — have hitherto been stressed even though, in our central assignment as marketers, we address behaviors rather than persons. A classification system for behaviors is proposed and its implications are discussed.

The “academic-practitioner gap” is a problem that marketers have kept at arm’s length by rhetoric and promises and neither substantive nor metatheoretical implications have been considered. In this paper, with regard to three topical domains — Market segmentation, Brand positioning, and Product versus Brand — differences in the concepts the terms designate in academic and practitioner usage are explored.