What If…? Storytelling for Epistemic Imagination in Marketing

This article makes a case for the development of epistemic imagination skills in marketing students. It presents an understanding of how imagination works and differs from related constructs such as creativity and fantasy, and how itengenders key marketing skills of creativity, transdisciplinary learning, perspective-taking, empathy, and emotional intelligence. The article suggests that epistemic imagination can be engaged and exercised through guided storytelling where stories develop along three orthogonal dimensions. The intra/interpersonal dimension is where students imagine themselves and others in different contexts. The temporal dimension uses counterfactual and prefactual thinking to consider the past and the future. The relational dimension uses paradoxical and metaphorical thinking to enable novel ways of perceiving and comprehending. Together, these forms of storytelling engage epistemic imagination and prime students to respond creatively to consumers based on intelligence, empathy, understanding of consumer perspectives, and emotional intelligence.