How effectively do marketing journals transfer useful learning from scholars to practitioners?

The author's career experience provides the impetus for a survey of the extent to which marketing journals succeed in transferring useful knowledge from academics to practitioners. The Flesch Reading Ease measurement method is used to compare 475 articles published in 14 English‐language journals during 2003. Scores are found to range from zero to a figure only just inside the “fairly easy” range, the average is in the middle of “difficult”, and the mainstream marketing titles are grouped at the low‐readability end of the distribution. Analysis of variance confirms that differences within the sample are significant. The author draws personal conclusions, and suggests possible extensions of this exploratory study.