Academic Resource Center - American Marketing Association

Academic Resource Center

This is the first column of what I hope will be many on the subject of the AMA�s Academic Resource Center on the Web. My involvement began in late summer of this year, when I met with Bart Weitz and Greg Marshall of the AMA Academic Council in Gainesville, FL. At that meeting, they asked me to be the Editor of the Academic Resource Center. While I was zigging and zagging in response to their question, our conversation took a number of turns.

Among other topics, at a certain point in our discussion we hit upon one of the weaknesses of e-mail lists: A list can be useful, but it operates on a day-to-day basis without an easy-to-use archive memory. A Web site is a great way to archive material, but it is a more static and passive medium. Could we combine the best of these two media and produce something really unique?

What�s more, the AMA has the largest academic membership of any professional marketing organization, and it has done a great service to the field by providing hardware and software support for ELMAR, the most widely subscribed e-mail list for marketing academicians. If the Academic Resource Center and ELMAR lists could be coordinated, there�s no telling what sorts of marvelous things we could do. Ultimately it was the potential of things that we could do that led me to stop dodging and to say yes.

And when I say �we could do,� believe me, I mean we. Here�s why: An editor, after all, is in the business of making a market, the market between writers and readers. A survey commissioned by the Academic Council found that the membership really wants a Web site with lots of useful marketing content for teaching and research. And my own experience with ELMAR tells me that there are a lot of you out there willing to share your content (your wisdom) with the group. As the Editor of the Academic Resource Center, I see my role as one of jump-starting a virtuous cycle in which people contribute their material online, which draws an ever larger audience looking for material, which in turns drives more people to contribute in order to place their name and materials in front of an even larger audience, and so on.

At least that�s the theory, which is related to the economic notion of network externalities. As to whether this theory works out in practice, I guess we will all be getting a look at that in future columns.

�Charlie Hofacker