JUNE2002 JOURNALOFMACROMARKETING REVIEW ESSAY Postmodernism and Marketing: Separating the Wheat from the Chaff JohnO’ShaughnessyandNicholasJacksonO’Shaughnessy Postmodernism, as a philosophy and a set of doctrines, has made incursions into marketing. The incursion into marketing has given postmodernism visibility among marketing aca- demics. This article argues that there is a need for a critical appraisal of postmodernism’s potential contribution to mar- keting. What has been written so far on postmodernism as applied to marketing tends to be peripheral to the key doc- trines of postmodernism. In setting out the postmodernist claims, this article argues that while some of these claims may be defensible, most are not. Insofar as the influence of postmodernism has been benign or progressive, it is because it has dramatized and intensified criticism already under way of the claim that the methodology of the physical sciences rep- resents the only way to certain knowledge. The downside of postmodernism is an untenable extension of this insight that would, if adopted by marketing, be highly dysfunctional. Postmodernism is a fashionable topic, and Venkatesh (1999) in the Journal of Macromarketing lists some of the marketingjournalarticlesonthesubject.Venkateshconfines himselftowhathedescribesasthefiveimportantconditions of postmodernism: the sign system, hyperreality, particularism, fragmentation, and symbolic behaviors. He discussestheglobaleconomybasedonsignsandimages,the flexiblenatureofproductionandconsumption,andtheemer- gence of informational capitalism or the information econ- omy. Except for some of the terms he uses, such as hyperreality ,muchofwhathewritesispostmodernisminthe senseof“after-modernism”orthepostmoderncondition,not postmodernismaspropagatedbypostmodernwriters.Specu- lations about the postmodern condition are not the same as postmodernism, although descriptions of the postmodern condition(postmodernity)describecertaincharacteristicsof Westernsocietiesthatpostmodernismseekstoexplain.This articleisacritiqueofpostmodernism.Intheprocess,itisalso acritiqueofclaimsofpostmodernityfromthepointofviewof marketing. When Venkatesh (1999, 145) talks about postmodernism attempting to “restore aesthetic approaches in human dis- course giving prominence to the linguistic and symbolic aspectsofhumanlife,elevatevisualityandspectacletolevels of critical discourse, recognize subjective experiences as a meaningfulpartofhumanpractices,andredefinethehuman subjectasbothacognitiveandanaestheticsubject,”readers might have wondered what the controversy was about since fewarestillobsessedwiththecalculatingmachine-likemodel ofmanastheonlywaytogo.Butawideracquaintancewith postmodernism is needed to evaluate its merits. This is the purposeofthisarticle,whichfirstgivesageneralorientation topostmodernismtogetherwithbackgroundconceptssuchas modernity, postmodernity, structuralism, poststructuralism, and deconstruction before considering the validity of postmodernism’sempiricalandphilosophicalclaims. REVIEW OF POSTMODERNISM AND BACKGROUND CONCEPTS The term postmodernism was coined by the American Marxist critic Fredric Jameson (1984) to embrace a whole hostofideasthattogetherclaimedtorepresentanewphasein Western culture. It entered into architectural writing in the 1950stodescribeamoveawayfromshinymachine-likeedi- fices.Itonlylatercametocoverawholesweepofcriticisms ofmodernity(Harvey1989).However,thewritersmostasso- ciatedwithpostmodernismdonotspeakwithonevoice,sim- plybeingunitedbyanantagonismtomodernity.AsStephen Brown(1995,11)says,“Forthecynical,indeed,theonlydis- cernible point of consensus among postmodernists is their lackofconsensusonpostmodernism.”JaneFlax(1990,188), a sympathetic writer on postmodernism, gives a brief over- viewofwritersandtopicsthatarediscussedinthisarticle: Journal of Macromarketing, Vol.22No.1,June2002 109-135 ©2002SagePublications 109