Managerial Decision-Making in Marketing: Matching the Demand and Supply Side of Creativity

This article provides an overview of creativity research in marketing and offers a novel framework for matching the demand and supply side of creativity. The demand side comprises the marketing problem domain and the specifics of the task, which will influence how much emphasis management places on the originality versus usefulness of the generated ideas or solutions. The supply side includes individual and organizational resources that management can put to use for boosting creativity. Based on contemporary creative cognition research, this article distinguishes the following pathways to creativity: fluency, persistence, and flexibility. Examples of common marketing decisions, including their need for creativity, the emphasis placed on originality versus usefulness, and the pathway(s) that may lead to the desired level of creativity, are used to illustrate how the presented framework for matching the demand and supply side of creativity can guide managerial decision-making. This article concludes with a discussion of creativity research priorities in marketing.