Research Article

Journal of Macromarketing
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The Cultural Knowledge Perspective: © The Author(s) 2022
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Insights on Resource Creation for Marketing DOI: 10.1177/02761467211055061
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Theory, Practice, and Education

Michelle F. Weinberger1 and Robert F. Lusch2

Abstract
Marketing researchers and marketers have long focused on the importance of resources: organizations having enough raw mate-
rials, advertising budget, distribution and supply facilities, data, technology, money, connections, time, or employees. However,
these only become valuable to the organization when people identify them as potential resources and then use them adeptly. In
this conceptual paper, we argue that understanding the process of identifying and creating resources is essential to understanding
organizational success. We introduce the Cultural Knowledge Perspective. The perspective refocuses attention on the process
by which people use and extend their cultural knowledge to identify latent materials, materials that have resource potential, and
the process by which cultural knowledge is used to activate latent materials to create actual resources. We bring together and
build on disparate research in marketing, sociology, and management to show the importance of understanding how the cultural
knowledge of marketers and consumers is deployed for resource creation. In doing so, we show how this perspective opens
avenues for hiring marketing talent, product development, marketing communications, and marketing education.

Keywords
Cultural knowledge, product development, resources, human resources, marketing, marketing education

Resources do not exist without human intervention. To some
this is not intuitive, because forests, grain, and mineral deposits
in the earth are typically thought of and thus taught to be resour-
ces in and of themselves. Drucker (1993/1985, p. 30) stated suc-
cinctly: “Innovation, indeed, creates a resource. There is no
such thing as a ‘resource’ until man finds a use for something
in nature…”. Objects and ideas with resource potential but
that have not yet been recognized as useful are just “latent mate-
rials” (Zimmerman 1933). Resources only become so once
there is the knowledge to understand what to do with the
forests, grain, or mineral deposits and the skills to execute
those ideas; resources are a function of human appraisal and
ability (Constantin and Lusch 1994; Vargo and Lusch 2011;
Zimmerman 1933). Without knowledge that grain in the form
of bread could provide sustenance, an understanding that
people would be willing to eat it, and skills in grain growing,
processing, and baking, bread would not exist as a resource
for consumption. This distinction is important, because it gets
to the heart of what a resource is and how the creation of a
resource occurs. While marketing research has long focused
on the importance of resources and the codification of knowl-
edge for leveraging resources, the process by which materials
with resource potential are identified and then converted into
actual resources with value for organizations, consumers, and
society has not received scholarly attention in marketing. This
gap is where our focus sits.
The essence of our argument is that latent materials, which
are typically called resources, are seldom if ever the most
important source of success for organizations. Cultural knowl-
edge is the essential ingredient allowing marketers and consum-
ers to identify latent materials with resource potential and then
convert them into resources for success. We develop a Cultural
Knowledge Perspective, showing how the embodied cultural
knowledge of employees is essential to both identify latent
materials with resource potential and then convert those latent
materials into resources of value in society.
As we will detail, cultural knowledge is the meaning- and
skill-based knowledge that all people bring to bear on their
environment. Marketers need meaning-based cultural knowl-
edge to see resource potential in things, people, contexts, and
ideas that others do not. They also need skill-based cultural
knowledge to convert those potential resources into actual
1
Associate Professor of Integrated Marketing Communications, Medill School,
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
2
Formerly Professor of Marketing, Eller College of Management, University of
Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA
Corresponding Author:
Michelle F. Weinberger, Associate Professor, Integrated Marketing
Communications, Medill School, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208,
USA.
Email: m-weinberger@northwestern.edu
2 Journal of Macromarketing
resources that help them to achieve goals such as product inno-
vation, effective marketing communications campaigns, or rela-
tionship development that help build organizational success.
Studies in marketing (Allen 2002; Bettman and Park 1980;
Brucks 1985; Holt 1998; John and Whitney 1986;
McCracken 2009; Sujan, Sujan and Bettman 1988; Sujan
1985), management (Kogut and Zander 1992; Nonaka 1994),
and sociology (Bourdieu 1983; Fligstein 2001; Holt 1997;
Lizardo 2006) have demonstrated the effects of knowledge
forms with aspects similar to cultural knowledge. However,
we specifically focus on the intersection between cultural
knowledge and resources.
The idea that resources require activation is central to the
service dominant logic philosophy forwarded by Vargo and
Lusch (2004). Our paper clarifies and builds on those central
concepts. First, that work distinguishes between operand
resources that are inert and operant resources that are activated.
Here we prefer Zimmerman’s (1933) term latent material rather
than operand resource to emphasize and clarify that latent mate-
rials are not yet resources. Latent materials require activation to
create a resource that can be drawn on for support. Second, our
focus is on the resource creation process, which has received
scant attention. In this paper, we argue that cultural knowledge
is the essential ingredient for transforming latent materials into
resources.
Using an interdisciplinary approach, we heed the call of
MacInnis (2011) by synthesizing, clarifying, and extending the-
oretical frameworks suggested by others studying resources and
knowledge (c.f. Arnould 2008; Arnould, Price and Malshe
2006; Constantin and Lusch 1994; Giddens 1984;
Madhavaram and Hunt 2008; Sewell 1992; Vargo and Lusch
2004; Zimmerman 1933). In doing so, we develop a sensitizing
theory (Epp and Price 2008; Turner 1986) that has specific
implications for marketing practice, research, and education.
In the first section, we highlight extant theories about resources.
Second, we focus on the sociological concepts related to cul-
tural knowledge that can help us extend our understanding of
resources, and then, in the third section, we bring them together
to develop a model of resource creation and detail the ways in
which the perspective can help organizations become more suc-
cessful. Finally, we turn to a range of future directions for mar-
keting research, organizations, and business education.
“Resources are Not, They Become”
Resources have long been central to marketing thought, but few
in the field examine the process by which people identify mate-
rials with resource potential and then actually create those
resources. Early work largely equated resources with tangible
static matter, often natural materials; industry was viewed as
enhancing the utility of these physical materials by changing
their form, time, place, and possession (Shaw 1912; Weld
1916, 1917). It focused on processes of sorting and moving het-
erogeneous and geographically concentrated resources to create
assortments when and where consumers wanted them
(Alderson 1965). Coase and Wang (2011) observe that the
“prevailing paradigm in economics is essentially preoccupied
with the problem of resource allocation in a static world”
(p. 1) where the development and creation of resources is
ignored and their static, continued existence is assumed.
These authors argued for change and for the inclusion of
social processes around resource creation.
Over the last several decades, there has been a shift in per-
spective in marketing and business thought that involves, in
part, viewing resources not simply as static and tangible but
as dynamic and intangible. Business strategists, scholars, and
business journalists widely agree that a firm’s resources that it
draws upon for competitive advantage are valuable, rare, inim-
itable (or difficult to imitate), and non-substitutable (often
called VRIN resources) (Barney 1991). While this model
helps build an understanding of the characteristics of successful
firms, it is still unclear how organizations create these resources.
Not all people are able to identify an object or idea as a potential
resource and then, even when identified, it takes additional
human innovation skills to make the object or idea into an
actual resource.
Drawing on a range of scholarly work, Vargo and Lusch
(2004) describe how things traditionally thought of as ‘resour-
ces’ are themselves not inherently valuable or useful. They cite
Zimmerman (1933) who describes, “One can envisage man
[sic] submerged in an ocean of “neutral stuff” – i.e., matter,
energy, conditions, relations and so on—of which he is
unaware and which affect him neither favorably or unfavor-
ably” (p. 9). It is only when that “neutral stuff” (what we will
refer to as latent materials) becomes both recognized as useful
and then successfully used by an actor that it becomes a
resource. For instance, Fred Smith, founder of FedEx, was
the first to identify a range of latent materials—planes, airports,
pilots, vans, warehouses, airspace—as potential resources for
creating the first integrated package delivery system in the
world. Many observers thought the system impractical, predict-
ing its failure (Frock 2006). They were unable to see the
resource potential in these latent materials. However, what the
literature does not address is what allowed Smith to see this
potential in these latent materials.
Viewing resources as anything drawn on for support by an
actor (Vargo and Lusch 2004) means resources are a function
of relationships between actors and things (tangible or intangi-
ble). However, the actors’ role in this process has been under-
examined. Penrose (1959) recognized this when she stated:
“The services yielded by resources are a function of the way
in which they are used—exactly the same resource when used
for different purposes or in different ways and in combination
with different types or amounts of other resources provides a
different service or set of services” (p. 25).
What ex post appears to be a resource often was not actually
obvious in the social and historical context. Take for example,
Sam Walton, who in the early 1950’s operated a Ben Franklin
variety store in rural Rogers, Arkansas. He was able to experi-
ence the frustrations of locals who needed to out-shop to get a
better selection and prices from big city merchants. Walton
envisioned a discount merchandise store that could succeed
Weinberger and Lusch 3

by providing service to small rural communities. But, not even

his large Chicago-based wholesaler, Butler Brothers, could see
a big box store of about 20,000 feet as a potential resource. If
anything it was considered to be a waste of valuable time,
money, and human talent. Of course, Walton’s idea went on
to become Walmart, one of the most successful chains of
global retail stores in history (Lichtenstein 2009).
What allowed Walton to see these opportunities, these latent
materials where others could not? In the next section, we argue
that both meaning and skill-based cultural knowledge allowed
Sam Walton to first identify this latent opportunity and then
actually convert it into an actual resource. We draw on socio-
logical research to detail what cultural knowledge is and in
the subsequent section argue that organizational strategists,
engineers, and marketers need it both to identify resource poten-
tial and to convert those latent materials into actual resources
that help fuel organizational success.
Figure 1. Cultural knowledge formation.

Cultural Knowledge Explained

Knowledge is of course central to organizational processes.
Certainly, it is not new to suggest that firms need a strong
knowledge base to succeed and compete effectively. Myriad
pieces in academic journals and business press have tried to
understand and manage firm and employee knowledge, focus-
ing on topics such as the knowledge economy (Glazer 1991;
Powell and Snellman 2004; Stewart 1997; Warsh 2006), knowl-
edge management and how to manage knowledge workers
(Tampoe 1993) processes for codifying knowledge transfer
(Nonaka 1994), and the knowledge bases consumers draw
from in preference formation and decision making (Allen
2002; Bettman and Park 1980; Brucks 1985; Johnson and
Russo 1984). However, of the many forms and foci, ours is
on the concept of cultural knowledge.
Definition and Components
Our understanding of cultural knowledge draws heavily on the
theories and perspective of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1977,
1983, 1984). Cultural knowledge consists of both the
meaning lens through which one understands the world, or
meaning-based cultural knowledge, and the learned skills one
possesses to act within it, which we call skill-based cultural
knowledge. Together these include the sum of information
accumulated through socialization, experiences, and education;
it guides action, often tacitly, in a fairly patterned way, though it
is always changing and fallible (see Figure 1). Importantly, cul-
tural knowledge is best understood as the embodied orientation
one has towards the world (Bourdieu 1984). This perspective
does not use the word culture to refer to the facts one knows
about things like arts or music nor does it use the term to
refer to “a” culture, a group of people who live in a specific geo-
graphic area (Sunderland and Denny 2007). Instead, it consists
of the taken for granted values, tastes, ideologies, the ways in
which one comports themselves, and what they see as right
and wrong, good and bad, and ideal or not (Bourdieu 1983;
Swidler 1986, 2001). In the domain of food, for instance, it
shapes what is seen as edible, nutritious, a treat, fancy, appropri-
ate, and gross. It also shapes tacit understandings of when one
should eat and how one should eat down to the smallest
nuances. Cultural knowledge shapes not only what an individ-
ual sees as important but also both their schematic understand-
ing of the world (Anderson 1984) and how that information is
categorized in the future (D’Andrade 1995). Although it funda-
mentally guides one’s orientation, most cultural knowledge is
embodied, meaning it is naturalized so it is often not even
explicitly recognized; thus it often tacitly guides thought and
action (Bourdieu 1983; Wacquant 2004). At the same time,
while it is embodied and naturalized and not typically consid-
ered, it is not unconscious. People are aware of their prefer-
ences, tastes, and interests. This knowledge is just taken for
granted.
Formation
Bourdieu describes how cultural knowledge forms through
socialization, experiences, and, to a certain extent, formal edu-
cation. First, an embodied (Bourdieu 1983), schematic (Sewell
1992), or rule-based (Giddens 1984) form of cultural knowl-
edge is gained through childhood and accumulates over time
through informal education, daily actions, and activity with
socializing agents (Bourdieu 1984). For instance, the product
designer and marketer Josiah Wedgwood grew up in a family
of potters and developed the 18th century Wedgwood brand
from a small pottery operation to an internationally recognized
and respected name in a matter of decades. From a young age,
he was immersed in the world of pottery such that it was second
nature to him (Burton 1976). Through his teen years, he devel-
oped a sense of the status system and consumer values
(Koehn 2001), allowing him to later recognizing the ways
pottery could symbolize status, a major shift in consumer mean-
ings. Similarly, Fred Smith, founder of FedEx, spent time as a
4 Journal of Macromarketing
child in the transportation and logistics world; his father helped
to found the Greyhound bus lines, he was from a military
family, and he learned to fly by age 15 (Miller 2001). An under-
standing of these worlds accreted through micro interactions
over time, discussions at the dinner table, listening to conversa-
tions by adults, and visits to his father’s work and the military
bases that all shaped his understanding of the world, his cultural
knowledge.
The second form of cultural knowledge is experience-based,
cultivated and embodied later in life. Post-childhood, a con-
sumer (Coulter et al., 2003), employee, or manager
(Constantin and Lusch 1994; Ericsson et al. 2007; Fligstein
2001; Kogut and Zander 1992; Leonard-Barton and Swap
2005; Moykr 2002) continue to accumulate cultural knowledge
through practice. FedEx’s Smith served in the Marine Corps.,
where he describes: “The Marine Corps was the only service
that has both air and ground components, in fact, I was in
both, so it was very logical to me” (Guerrera and Baer 2007).
Through years of experience in the Marines, he saw what
became the FedEx system of transportation as natural, even
when others saw it as untenable.
The third way cultural knowledge accumulates is through
formal education or codified fact-based ‘book’ knowledge. In
contrast to cultural knowledge accumulated through socializa-
tion and experiences, it is not necessarily embodied but can
be more easily codified and transferred. Learning through class-
room education or through books, videos, and training manuals
where the knowledge has been codified is a more formal source
of accumulating cultural knowledge. It is what others have
called institutionalized knowledge (Bourdieu 1983), informa-
tion (Kogut and Zander 1992) or explicit knowledge (Nonaka
1994). However, Bourdieu warns that cultural knowledge
acquired through formal education is not embodied and culti-
vated through practice over time and therefore is not as effective
in empowering actors (Bourdieu 1983). Cumulatively, beyond
just shaping people’s perspectives, we believe that cultural
knowledge shapes what people notice as strange, what they
see as natural, where they see opportunities in the social, cul-
tural, and economic landscape, and the skill set that allows
them to leverage these opportunities. In short,
potential resource identification and activation.
Because individuals are socialized in different contexts, are
educated with different priorities, and have different experi-
ences, endowments of cultural knowledge are highly heteroge-
neous (Sewell 1992). However, people are often unaware of the
impact of cultural knowledge on perception and action. Often
just seeing it as a disposition, what they are good at or what
they see as normal, it nonetheless guides behavior in important
ways for organizational actors. Beyond just their own cultural
knowledge endowments, marketers are also more effective at
recognizing opportunities and offering legitimate value propo-
sitions to consumers when they understand how consumers’
cultural knowledge guides their values, goals, and action, a
point to which we will return. A persuasive argument can be
made that organizations should institutionalize a role for mar-
keters who both understand culture and are able to translate
or adeptly use those insights to make valuable recommenda-
tions for organizational success. As business anthropologist
Grant McCracken argues, Chief Culture Officers (CCOs),
have an embodied, nuanced understanding of consumers and
contexts, the ability to translate this knowledge into insight
that has a direct effect on overall organizational performance
(McCracken 2009).
In the next section, we bring together the prior sections on
cultural knowledge and on resources to focus on the ways
that cultural knowledge is used to identify opportunities for
resource creation.
A Model of Resource Creation
Cultural knowledge is important because it is the key to creating
resources; an individual needs to apply cultural knowledge to
what Zimmerman calls latent materials to identify resource
opportunities and then convert the latent materials into resour-
ces. Anything that human ingenuity can work with to convert
into a resource is a latent material. They can take a variety of
forms: inanimate objects, including natural materials, intangible
materials, such as big data or laws, or even animate potential
relationships (Zimmerman 1933).
The application of cultural knowledge to a latent material is
required for the latent material to become a resource. As sociol-
ogist William Sewell states, “…the activation of material things
as resources, the determination of their value and social power,
is dependent on the cultural schemas that inform their social
use” (1992, p. 12). Put differently, value does not reside in
the object but rather in an individual, firm, or system’s contex-
tualized use of the latent material. Collectively, actors decide
what counts as a resource and what does not, as well as how
it is a resource and for whom.
Cultural knowledge first needs to be applied to latent mate-
rials to identify them as potential resources. Next, cultural
knowledge is also needed to convert the latent materials into
actual resources for use. Much marketing success and failure
can be understood through this model. The potter Josiah
Wedgwood, introduced earlier, identified the goals of middle
class consumers who emulated the elites to improve their
social status (Koehn 2001). Unlike his contemporaries, he
drew on this observation from his cultural context to create a
glaze and molds that were cheaper to make and purchase but
that looked expensive. Beyond just identifying the resource
potential though, Wedgwood skillfully engineered a glaze to
a finished look that appealed to these consumers. In fact, the
pottery was not a resource for customers (and hence
Wedgwood) until the sales force was able to position the table-
ware in the marketplace as valuable for middle class consumers
to display as a social status signal. Cultural knowledge allowed
him to both recognize the cultural value and to deploy the skills
for the glazing compound and molds to create a resource for
consumers, which in turn provided the company a sustainable
competitive advantage in the marketplace. Perhaps one would
argue that with just the book knowledge of glazes the product
development process could occur, but we argue that those
Weinberger and Lusch
with book knowledge can fail to create a resource if they cannot
understand, communicate, and operate in the socio-cultural
environment.
Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks, provides another
contemporary example of cultural knowledge, resource identifi-
cation, and resource creation. Schultz used his cultural knowl-
edge (meaning and skill-based) to resurrect and transform the
meaning of coffee and the coffee industry. While Schultz
knew that per-capita coffee consumption decreased steeply
from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s, and that most coffee
was perceived as a commodity (Koehn 2001), he uniquely
had the cultural knowledge to recognize an opportunity for spe-
cialty drinks and cafes. Schultz “had a keen appreciation for
how socioeconomic change affected customers’ wants and
needs….[he] used this understanding of the changing demand
side…to develop premium products and appealing retail envi-
ronments” (Koehn 2001, 202-3) transforming the business
and coffee industry. Schultz was not just able to identify an
opportunity in the premium retail coffee space and the potential
resources to create successful coffee houses, his skill-based cul-
tural knowledge provided him the ability to change the market-
place for coffee consumption worldwide while others
floundered.
Similarly, the cultural knowledge base of Starbucks’ Schultz
not only allowed him to notice important socio-cultural trends
and recognize potential resources (Schultz and Yang 1997),
but it allowed him to leverage those potential resources to
create compelling values-based value propositions for custom-
ers and resources for the organization. We believe that cultural
knowledge drives success in resource creation and in turn orga-
nizational success. However, this process is frequently over-
looked in management and marketing research which focus
on employee activity within the organization and specific
knowledge about firm activity. If marketing is the process of
connecting the customer to the organization (Moorman and
Rust 1999), the Cultural Knowledge Perspective shows why
some founders and employees are more adept at doing this
than others. Figure 2 represents this relationship between
latent materials, cultural knowledge, and resources.
Uncertain Conversion
Cultural knowledge is always fallible. Contexts are dynamic
and evolving. It is impossible to have complete knowledge of
all social contexts and the changes in each. Instead, people con-
stantly engage in “transposition” and “extension” of cultural
knowledge; they transpose what they know from past experi-
ences and apply that knowledge to develop beliefs about
current ones with similar properties (Bourdieu 1977; Sewell
1992, p. 8; Swidler 2001, p. 345). For resource creation,
people transpose by using cultural knowledge acquired from
their past experiences to identify that a newly observed latent
material could be a potential resource. They then apply that
past cultural knowledge to the new latent material to create a
resource. Fed Ex’s Smith transposed and extended his knowl-
edge from the military to a non-military B2B context.
5
Managers, marketers, and consumers must have a nuanced
understanding of their context to understand the difference
between a past situation and a current one, to recognize the
alterations that need making, and to extend that past knowledge.
To do this, cultural knowledge needs to be sufficiently deep and
broad. A marketing manager of a failing account needs to sense
how to communicate and negotiate with suppliers who threaten
to cut off shipments and how these communications need to be
different from earlier periods when the brand was financially
healthy. At the same time, the Vice President of Sales needs
to know how and when to call on key customers to keep
them purchasing from the firm in uncertain times.
Successful use of cultural knowledge is more nuanced than
just having “high cultural capital,” where individuals have
high socio-economic status and the ability to create resources
in their social field (Bourdieu 1984; Holt 1998). An actor can
have substantial cultural knowledge about one context and
little about another, resulting in a misunderstanding.
Therefore, one might not be able to accomplish what they
need because of contextualized knowledge deficits or misunder-
standing the meanings of others’ actions. The
white, upper-middle class executive of a fast food franchise
chain in suburban Chicago might not understand the nuanced
meanings and tacit social codes of a largely working-class
Hispanic community where they want to open a location. A
local franchisee might have less “high” cultural capital but
might have richer, more nuanced cultural knowledge of social
cultural norms, values, and practices in this context to under-
stand the value proposition and experience design needed to
be successful with this community.
Effects on Organizational Success
Organizational employees use their cultural knowledge to rec-
ognize latent materials and then convert them to resources,
and, as a result, lay the groundwork for success, as depicted
in the last two boxes of Figure 2; yet failure or misrecognition
in any stage of this process can lead to organizational disadvan-
tage. The implications are consequential for organizations, mar-
keters, and the people they serve.
Organizational Success and Barriers
It is clear that the successful organizational leaders detailed in
this paper were able to deeply understand a context and recog-
nize latent opportunities rooted in a socio-historic moment.
Further, they were able to gather financial and social support
and were able to cultivate success with a mass audience.
While there are stumbles, these types of organizations can,
even when starting with a relatively small budget, do what a
large organizations may not be able do. They can monitor the
environment, apply their knowledge to latent materials around
them, and create resources for success. Those who get ahead
may be ‘masterful’ at this process (Madhavaram and Hunt
2008) taking a range of latent materials not even seen by
others, or viewed as useless, and making them valuable
6 Journal of Macromarketing
Figure 2. How cultural knowledge contributes to resource creation and organizational success.
resources (Galunic and Rodan 1998). In fact, cultural knowl-
edge may form the basis for shaping and creating markets,
not only being market driven but driving markets
(Humphreys 2010; Humphreys and Carpenter 2018; Jaworski,
Kohli and Sahay 2000; Kumar, Scheer and Kotler 2000).
At the level of individual employees, including product
designers, engineers, marketers, and managers, researchers
have empirically found that individual cultural knowledge
impacts firm competitive advantage (Dutta, Narasimhan and
Rajiv 1999; Slotegraaf, Moorman and Inman 2003;
Srivastava, Shervani and Fahey 1998). Employees have two
important types of knowledge: facts (information) and
know-how (the tacit knowledge of how to do something that
is embodied and harder to transfer) (Kogut and Zander 1992).
It is through the application of know-how that a real advantage
is created that is difficult to imitate. This is similar to conceptu-
alizations of the knowledge underlying institutional and
embodied cultural capital (Bourdieu 1983) but in a firm
context, highlighting that facts about mechanics and procedures
are important, but the tacit know-how of their idiosyncrasies
that are embodied over time is even more essential (Kogut
and Zander 1992).
Additional research suggests that companies whose manag-
ers have diverse mental models and can incorporate understand-
ings of both customers and competitors are most successful
(Day and Nedungadi 1994). Perhaps this is because they have
a broad embodied cultural knowledge base from which they
can draw. They have multiple points of reference to understand
a range of meanings and actions. However, while embodied
knowledge structures are often a source of advantage, they
also threaten to limit creativity at times when individuals
cannot see out of their own perspective (Walsh 1995).
Organizations with employees that understand the evolving
cultural knowledge bases of consumers will themselves be
more adept at identifying latent materials for an organization.
Put differently, employees who have the cultural knowledge
to understand the cultural milieu and the knowledge base of
potential customers will be poised to identify challenges,
values, and opportunities that others do not see (Arnould,
Price and Malshe 2006). For instance, the retail buyer for a
chain selling jeans to tweens needs to spot changing contextu-
alized meanings and practices early and avoid stocking the
retailer with inventory that will not sell due to a change in
what is “cool” that season. Beyond just following these trends
though, if they deeply understand the changing nature of
what it means to be a tween in American society, they might
identify a “blue ocean” for product development, wide-open
opportunities for an organization that are product-based
(Kimand Mauborgne 2005), or even ideological opportunities
to create deep resonance and that are culturally generative
even in seemingly crowded, saturated markets (Guerrera and
Baer 2007).
At the organizational level, entities themselves have been
shown to learn as they acquire, distribute, interpret, and put
knowledge into collective memory; this organizational knowl-
edge adds up to more than the sum of the knowledge of the
employees individually (Sinkula 1994). Organizations that are
not only able to recognize the value of new, external informa-
tion, but also assimilate it and apply it, have a high absorptive
capacity pre-disposing them to be better in their use of latent
materials by creating more successful innovations (Cohen
et al. 1990). Thus, a corporate culture oriented towards learning
and innovation is an essential antecedent to effective marketing
strategy making (Menon et al. 1999). In fact, firms that formally
translate between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge build
firm level knowledge, foster creativity, and facilitates combina-
tion (Menon et al. 1999), a form of resource integration. But, we
argue that this still requires individual employees with tacit
knowledge of the organization, consumers, contexts, and indus-
try to understand how to use this codified knowledge for organi-
zational success to occur (Menon et al. 1999).
New cultural knowledge needs to be integrated and applied
in evolving contexts (Ballantyne and Varey 2006; Madhavan
and Grover 1998; Vargo and Lusch 2008). However, the
speed at which the cultural knowledge is applied is often essen-
tial in organizations. Firms with dynamic capabilities
(Eisenhardt and Martin 2000) or combinative capabilities
(Kogut and Zander 1992) can more quickly take in, integrate,
and react. This sustained, dynamic success depends on the
history of a firm’s motivation and ability to learn and implement
what it learns (Dickson 1992; Peters, Gassenheimer and
Johnston 2009). Rare, ‘masterful’ firms are uniquely able to cul-
tivate and integrate cultural knowledge across individuals pro-
viding potential for competitive advantage and deeper cultural
knowledge (Kogut and Zander 1992; Madhavaram and Hunt
2008).
Weinberger and Lusch
In sum, one of the key sources of resource advantaged,
market oriented, and market driving organizations is cultural
knowledge. Separately and cumulatively, the influences of
socialization, experiences, and education in developing cultural
knowledge and its attendant skills, meaning, and sense making
are an important source of power, success, and disadvantage.
The question for organizations then is how to more rapidly,
astutely, or fortuitously use cultural knowledge to combine,
recombine, and integrate latent materials to actualize resources
for success.
When success is not attained, researchers, policy makers,
consumers, and organizations often look to latent material def-
icits rather than cultural knowledge limitations. Often people’s
focus and explanation is on not having enough time, material
possessions, money, people, or data and their solution is often
to acquire more latent materials. However, often having more
time, possessions, money, people, or data and their solution
are not valuable if used to solve the wrong problem or the
problem is solved in the wrong way. In the following section,
we focus on these barrriers to success.
Organizational Disadvantage Because of
Cultural Knowledge “Limitations”
One’s ability to mobilize the cultural knowledge that they have
and apply it is not always secure; it depends on actors’ ongoing
ability to transpose cultural knowledge; in other words, apply-
ing the appropriate cultural knowledge to the appropriate
latent materials in the appropriate situation. Limitations are
the failures in cultural knowledge application that create barri-
ers (Willis 1977), here barriers to resource identification and
creation1. Limitations occur because of a lack of breadth or
depth in cultural knowledge to make the transposition. Sewell
(1992) notes that attempts at resource creation are always in
jeopardy; “Investment in a new market may make the entrepre-
neur a pauper or a millionaire, negotiations of a marriage with a
new patriline may result in a family’s elevation in status or its
extinction in a feud, planting a crop in the familiar field may
result in subsistence, starvation, or plenty” (p.18). Failure to
transpose and apply cultural knowledge, often means failing
to identify, convert, or fully leverage latent materials.
Depth Deficits
Cultural knowledge deficits might occur due to a lack of
nuance, or what Zaltman and Zaltman (2008) call a “depth
deficit”. As a result, either an individual cannot create a
resource or they misapply cultural knowledge, which results
in failed activation or a less potent resource. Depth deficits of
meaning and/or skill-based knowledge can create a problem
for resource creation. In many cases, actors do not know what
they do not know. They do not have the depth of cultural
knowledge to recognize a potential problem or they recognize
a problem or opportunity but do not have the skill to execute
it. For example, the leading orange juice brand Tropicana
7
hired Arnell Group to redesign its packaging in 2009. It
wanted to shift from the iconic label displaying an orange
with a straw stuck in it. Arnell Group proceeded on a cool
hunting expedition and, taking inspiration from modern
design, created a new modern label sans orange with a
sleeker font. The multimillion-dollar redesign failed and the
company reverted to the original packaging (McCracken
2009). The designer did not have the deep cultural knowledge
to understand the meaning of the brand to the target market
and the ways in which the Tropicana brand created value for
its loyal customers.
Breadth Deficits
Meanwhile, breadth deficits come from not having broad
enough cultural knowledge about a new context to make a suc-
cessful transposition and extension; often, as a result, misappli-
cation of knowledge occurs in the transposition. While cultural
knowledge bases form early, they are also continuously morph-
ing over time. Failure to update cultural knowledge leads to
misapplication and deficits. North reflects, “Learning (then) is
an incremental process filtered by the culture of a society
which determines the perceived payoffs, but there is no guaran-
tee that the cumulative past experience of a society will neces-
sarily fit them to solve new problems. Societies that get “stuck”
embody belief systems and institutions that fail to confront and
solve new problems of societal complexity” (1994). Like soci-
eties, firms and consumers too can get stuck, failing to know
what they don’t know.
Poorly executed transpositions often occur because of
breadth deficits. For instance, in New Orleans in 2005, hurri-
cane Katrina and the subsequent levee breaks destroyed the
entire lower Ninth Ward neighborhood, a predominantly
lower and working class, tight knit, Black community.
Donors from outside of New Orleans not only generously
rebuilt houses in lower 9th ward, but made them flood resistant,
green, and architecturally avant-garde, but locals found these
houses unattractive and weird, and the high porches did not
facilitate community building (Bernstein 2009). The outside
organizations had the cultural knowledge to know that there
was a physical need and to mobilize financial resources to
create houses. They framed the problem too narrowly though
for this set of consumers. They created houses but not homes.
They lacked the breadth of cultural knowledge to use the
money to create the opportunity for another potent resource,
community. In these cases, cultural understanding is needed,
because it provides a broader and deeper understanding of
diverse values within society.
Overcoming Gaps
The need to overcome a gap or deficit in cultural knowledge is
often desired, implicitly or explicitly by organizations. Gaps
may be more easily solved at the organizational than the indi-
vidual level. A firm could hire a Chief Customer Officer
(Rust, Moorman and Bhalla 2010) or Chief Culture Officer
8 Journal of Macromarketing
(McCracken 2009) who deeply understands consumer culture
and the social, historic, economic, and cultural context in
which an organization’s products, services, and customers
dwell. Of course, an organization needs to recognize that it
needs a CCO, and it takes skill in hiring the right CCO that actu-
ally understands culture and the organization and can continue
to update their cultural knowledge for successful transpositions.
Further, given that the organization is able to identify what
needs to be done differently, it needs to hire someone with
the skills to turn ideas and latent materials into resources.
While ideally all individuals would be able to be CCOs
within the firm, in the same way that market orientation scholars
argue that all employees should be market oriented (Kohli and
Jaworski 1990), in practice it is much more difficult for all
actors to be CCOs. Cultural knowledge is embodied over
time, and actors differ in the type and depth of cultural knowl-
edge they have (Bourdieu 1984; Holt 1997).
Such a role requires not just the knowledge of a culture but the
ability to think culturally. To understand the meaning laden
matrix in which people operate and to understand how they
bring these meanings to bear in their lives (see Sunderland and
Denny 2007 for in-depth treatment of these ideas). Therefore,
one does not need to come from a particular context to understand
it. And those from a particular context don’t automatically have
the ability to make explicit their tacit cultural knowledge about it.
It is possible for those outside the context to develop deep,
nuanced cultural understanding. This requires a shift in perspec-
tive from one that focuses on the individual’s psychological
motivation, emotional states, need states, and psychographics
to one that is focuses on understanding the contextual meanings
that consumers draw on as they act in the world. These create pat-
terns in consumers’ behaviors and interactions and help research-
ers to understand how their products and services become valued
and are used as resources in customers’ lives (Arnould, Price and
Malshe 2006; Sunderland and Denny 2007). We now suggest
some future directions for theory development and empirical
investigations, marketing practice, and marketing education.
Future Directions: Theory, Practice, and
Education
There are a variety of implications that stem from using a
Cultural Knowledge Perspective. In particular, research is
needed to detail how marketers and consumers accumulate,
extend, and transpose both meaning and skill-based cultural
knowledge to create resources and the ways in which success
and advantage are conceptualized and achieved for different
marketplace actors. Using this lens of resource creation, we
detail future directions for marketing research and theory devel-
opment, practice, and education.
Marketing Research and Theory
Broadly, there are four major opportunity areas for marketing
research and theory development: (a) cultural knowledge
formation, (b) transposition and extension of cultural knowl-
edge, (c) resource creation, and (d) organizational success/
disadvantage.
Cultural knowledge creation. If cultural knowledge is the
key to resource creation and subsequent advantage, then
research focusing on the formation and influence of each type
of cultural knowledge is essential. We know from sociological
research that cultural knowledge meaning and skills are formed
through socialization, experience, and education (Bourdieu
1983; Lamont 1992; Lareau 2003; Wacquant 2004).
However, more research is needed in the context of marketing
practice to understand how these are cultivated and where fail-
ures occur when employees try to cultivate particular forms of
cultural knowledge. Further examination is needed on the types
of knowledge formed at each stage, the breadth and depth of
knowledge cultivated by different learning practices, through
different socializing agents, and in different contexts. Formal
education alone might not provide the cultural knowledge
skills desired, but understanding the role of education as a
source of cultural knowledge might help marketing managers
make decisions about whether training certificates or appren-
ticeships are most effective.
Transposition and extension of cultural knowledge. In our
conceptual development, we described that past meaning and
skill-based cultural knowledge always need transposition and
extension for an employee to convert latent materials into
resources. A potentially fruitful area of research is around
understanding the development of diverse cultural knowledge,
or cultural knowledge breadth, a condition we believe leads
to more effective transposition. We posit that as an individual
acquires more diverse experiences, skills, and education they
have the potential to see connections that other individuals do
not see that could foster innovation and that also might
enable them to adapt in new situations. If this is found to be
true, key questions arise such as: what diverse forms of cultural
knowledge should employees have or acquire for flexible think-
ing in different types of contexts? Are a second or third foreign
language, living in another country, studying humanities along
with science, etc. efficient and effective means of acquiring
diverse cultural knowledge for successful transpositions and
extensions? How do these activities facilitate the development
of T-skills, i.e. the capacity to integrate knowledge from
diverse sources (Lansiti 1993; Madhavan and Grover 1998)?
Moreover, an understanding of the trade-offs between breadth
and depth of cultural knowledge and the implications for suc-
cessful transpositions and extensions will be needed.
Resource creation. All actors create resources on a continu-
ous basis, using their cultural knowledge to facilitate this con-
version. Overall, empirical work will advance understanding
of the sources of success in resource creation and innovation.
Specifically, consumers and marketers create resources to
support them in their daily lives, from simple survival (creating
resources for efficient and effective shelter and nourishment), to
performing well in their jobs (creating relationships, offerings,
and systems for effective and efficient performance), to per-
forming roles like parents (when creating efficient meals for
Weinberger and Lusch
the family that are effective in providing nutrition), students
(when creating a study space that allows them to be efficient
and effective at learning), or teachers (when creating effective
lectures and efficient grading systems). In each of these exam-
ples, one could examine the sources and barriers to success,
however defined, by focusing on the nexus of latent materials
and cultural knowledge asking: How is success emically
defined in each arena? What forms of cultural knowledge
help consumers achieve what they want in their daily lives?
And, at a more macro level, one could investigate the various
ways that institutions create barriers to the identification and
activation of latent materials and when they have an outsized
effect on supporting successful conversion.
Finally, practice theory scholars have developed models for
understanding how practices develop, stabilize, and change.
Broadly, such theories show the ways that materials, meanings,
and competencies come together to cohere a social practice
(Shove, Pantzar and Watson 2012). Practice theories focus on
how new practices are adopted and morph, like cooking or
showering. However, those theories tend not to account for
the resource creation process identified here, the step before
the practice forms. We are interested in where those new prac-
tices originate in the first place. We focus on the source of the
meanings and the competencies, the cultural knowledge one
uses to identify that a material might have resource potential
and then activate it to become an actual resource, a material
element of a practice. Future research could focus on connect-
ing these approaches.
Consumer and customer understanding. Marketing research
should continue advancing our understanding of the cultural
knowledge base of consumers, focusing on how it guides
them to see certain latent materials as potential resources and
the successes and failures in converting those into resources.
Focusing systematically to understand patterns in how different
types of consumers have different knowledge bases, goals,
views of advantage, and successes in transpositions is funda-
mental for product development and successful branding and
marketing communications programs.
Marketing Practice
Our theoretical framework suggests three major areas for atten-
tion by marketing practitioners. These include examining inno-
vation practices, evaluating value propositions, and adopting a
dialogical perspective to understanding consumers and clients.
We briefly review each.
Innovation practices. Innovation is about finding new or
novel ways of doing things and finding new and novel things
to do with latent materials (Drucker 1993/1985). We suggest
that cultural knowledge underlies innovation processes; it is
how individuals identify and convert latent materials into
resources for advantage. By hiring product engineers,
program developers, and experience strategists with broad
and deep meaning and skill-based cultural knowledge, firms
facilitate the potential for innovation. This means that employ-
ees need more than just formalized book knowledge and
9
academic performance in their core disciplines, but also skills
in noticing or understanding the context in which different
types of consumers live their lives. Beyond product innovation,
cultural knowledge is essential for innovation in other parts of
the marketing process including the identification and develop-
ment of new sales processes, promotion and advertising pro-
cesses, distribution practices, etc. Beyond marketing, across
the organization employees may have the cultural knowledge
that can enable breakthrough ideas to surface; in fact, many
organizations recognizing this are moving to open innovation
platforms (Chesbrough 2006).
Over time, knowledge from failures is also cultivated, pro-
viding the potential foundation for providing future insights;
when processed and evaluated correctly, these mistakes
provide important cultural knowledge. In the crucible of
reality and practice, through either the experience of success
or failure, learning occurs and cultural knowledge accumulates.
Yet how to facilitate this process is complex and warrants
research. While organizations might consider, as they succeed
and fail, conducting a cultural knowledge audit to formally
assess their learning as suggested by Nonaka (1994), it is impor-
tant to also recognize that often book knowledge is nuanced,
embodied knowledge and much harder to pin down and
assess (Bourdieu 1983). This means that auditors too need to
be culturally sensitive and aware for such a process to be
successful.
Value propositions. Haeckel (1999) has suggested a value
proposition is how the enterprise proposes to positively affect
the customer. This view is consistent with value as not embed-
ded in a product but something that is uniquely and phenome-
nologically assessed by the customer or beneficiary (Payne,
Storbacka and Frow 2008; Vargo and Lusch 2004, 2008). Yet
Frow and Payne (2008) report that less than 10% of companies
have successfully developed and communicated a value
proposition.
To propose value, a brand manager must understand what the
potential customers in a market segment find valuable, why, and
under what conditions. We suggest that value propositions are
effectively developed by deeply understanding consumer’s
values, goals, and contexts to understand if and how they will
see the product (latent material), if and how they will be able
to convert it into a valuable resource, and the other latent mate-
rials with which they might integrate it. Organizations can then
use this knowledge to develop a more competitively compelling
value proposition based on what the segment will value.
At the organizational level, it has been proposed that value
propositions should also be developed for all of the organiza-
tion’s key stakeholders (Frow and Payne 2011; Lusch and
Webster 2011). In this view, the organization should understand
itself as a latent material with potential resource value for stake-
holders. The key is to understand how potential value can be
offered to stakeholders and how the firm can establish itself
as a potential resource rather than liability. This is consistent
with Porter and Kramer’s (2011) call for a management frame-
work built around “shared value” that recognize the vital role of
stakeholders and society. Marketing, an area that has long
10
thought about value and value propositions, is suited to take a
lead role in facilitating a stakeholder unifying co-creation of
value marketing strategy (Lusch and Webster 2011), by devel-
oping value propositions for customers and all stakeholders.
But successfully responding to this challenge and accomplish-
ing it requires the marketing team gain deep insights into the
cultural knowledge of customers and stakeholders and their
capabilities to leverage the organization as a latent material.
Marketing Education
The Cultural Knowledge Perspective allows marketing pro-
grams to rethink the content that is taught to students as well
as the pedagogical approach. First, this requires rethinking the
treatment of resources by asking students to consider the under-
lying latent materials and cultural knowledge needed to activate
a resource. Such an approach would not only shift discussion of
resources themselves, but teaching materials on the product
development process, entrepreneurship, and branding. In
these cases, students would be sensitized to where the idea
came from and how it became viable as a potential resource
for the organization. This knowledge would help these future
practitioners more adeptly facilitate organizational success.
Second, coursework can encourage students to go through the
resource creation process themselves and be introspective
about the various combinations of latent materials and cultural
knowledge needed to bring the idea to fruition. This is often
done in entrepreneurship courses, but it can be applied more
broadly across the curriculum.
Finally, coursework needs to expand to include rigorous
classes that help students think culturally and learn cultural
methods. While most business school programs focus on quan-
titatively measured behaviors and psychologically measured
attitudes, motivations, and beliefs, cultural knowledge is best
understood through an anthropological lens and often, although
not necessarily, deep qualitative data. Rather than focusing on
teaching psychological tricks for getting consumers to buy
more, this perspective prioritizes skills such as understanding
the underlying cultural meanings and practices that govern
how people make sense of the world around them, what they
are trying to accomplish, and then how the particular product
or service is used in their lives as a resource. The goal is to
develop a deeper, more resonant value proposition and contex-
tualized understanding of people, which allows for the identifi-
cation of potential new products, services, experiences,
features, brands, and engagement mechanisms. For instance,
Cayla and Arnould (2013) describe how brands like Ford
Mustang, Whirlpool, and Wells Fargo used ethnography to
develop organizational empathy about the consumer experience
which led to more resonant and profitable strategies for these
firms.
However, in most business classrooms, culture is taught
superficially, often referring only to nation-state Cultures or
to only certain traditions and activities, rather than the meanings
and practices that people embody through socialization and
experience that guide peoples’ understandings of the world.
Journal of Macromarketing
Courses should encourage deep understanding of consumers’
lives in context, the cultural meaning and import of the products
and services that are taken for granted by consumers and pro-
ducers, and investigating the meanings of taken for granted
marketing concepts like “consumer satisfaction” and “customer
experience.” Meanwhile, cultural methods are typically taught
in a day as part of a market research class and by instructors
who themselves have not used such methods in research or
practice. Cultural methods are best taught through term long
instruction on thinking culturally and hands on application of
cultural data collection methods such as ethnography, semiotic
analysis, and depth interviewing, and cultural data analysis
techniques. Together, such rethinking of the marketing curricu-
lum could help future practitioners develop more robust under-
standing of the resource creation process and more robust
insight development skills for more nimble, adept, and
in-tune organizational practice.
Conclusion
The essence of our argument is that latent materials, which are
typically called resources, are seldom if ever the most important
source of advantage for organizations. Cultural knowledge is
the essential ingredient allowing marketers and consumers to
identify latent materials with resource potential and convert
them into resources for organization success. However, cultural
knowledge within organizations is rarely examined in this
way. The Cultural Knowledge Perspective that we detail pre-
sents a range of opportunities that can enable organizations
to create more innovative and valuable offerings, more resonant
marketing communications campaigns, and more effectiveorga-
nizational strategies.
Authors’ Note
In some ways, this paper is a time capsule. It represents ideas that Bob
and I batted around through long conversations at Arizona starting
when I was writing my dissertation in the late-2000s. The Service
Dominant Logic paper had just been published, I had taken Bob’s
class at Arizona that was, of course, resource-oriented, and I was notic-
ing the ways those ideas intersected ideas in sociology. We worked out
the ideas in this paper as a side project through drafts and conversa-
tions over the years, and, in his final months, Bob scattered notes
through a last draft. Bob’s scholarship was promiscuous in the best
way. He drew on concepts from biology to philosophy and on his
life experiences as he thought about marketing. To use the language
of our paper, his unique cultural knowledge helped him to see the
most basic marketing concepts – supply chains, resources, retailing
– differently and, as a result, create new intellectual resources for
our field. I am deeply grateful for the countless hours of mentorship
that he provided to me. He had a tremendous impact on my career
and I will be forever grateful.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Weinberger and Lusch
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship
and/or publication of this article.
ORCID iD
Michelle F. Weinberger https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2864-7140
Note
1. We prefer the term sociological term limitation (echoing Willis
(1977)) to the term resistance. Resistance implies an active, con-
scious force. Limitation is more accurate; it is passive, a block or
an absence that might not even be recognized.
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Author Biographies
Michelle Weinberger is an associate professor at the Medill School of
Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at
Northwestern University. Her research focuses on how people use con-
sumption to create and span symbolic boundaries through analyzes of
substantive arenas such as collective rituals, gift giving, and social
class. A second stream of research examines how marketing commu-
nications create meaning for stakeholders and consumers and the
effects of these communications. Her research is published in the
Journal of Consumer Research, European Journal of Marketing,
International Journal of Advertising, and Journal of Advertising
Research. She serves on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of
Consumer Research and the Journal of Marketing.
Robert F. Lusch most recently served as the James and Pamela Muzzy
chair in Entrepreneurship in the Eller College of Management at the
University of Arizona, where he had previously served as head of
the Department of Marketing. In addition to Arizona, he previously
served as the Dean of the business school at University of Oklahoma
and of the M.J. Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian
University. He is a former editor of the Journal of Marketing and the
recipient of several lifetime achievement and outstanding educator
awards. He was a prolific cross-disciplinary scholar who focused on
topics from retailing and entrepreneurship to philosophy and ethics.
He was best known for co-pioneering the field of Service Dominant
Logic.