Marketing as Cooking: The Return of the Sophists.

This literature-based paper is concerned with the range of marketing in general and the world of marketing practice in particular. It notes the historical nature of much reflection on marketing, shifts to the characteristics of modern marketing management and then turns to the Ancients. The emergence and subsequent ebb and flow of rhetoric are covered briefly and then the case is argued that rhetoric should be a core concept for understanding and enhancing marketing practice. The location of rhetoric in the critical literature is acknowledged but the primary knowledge claim is that rhetoric as a framing device and as an instrument for managerial action is central to a full appreciation of marketing reality [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]