Special Issue Editors: Marc Fischer, Kelly Haws, Jan-Benedict Steenkamp, and Harald van Heerde
The Journal of Marketing is pleased to announce a special issue on Empirics First. “Empirics-first” (EF) research is grounded in a real-world marketing phenomenon that involves obtaining and analyzing data and producing valid marketing-relevant insights without necessarily developing or testing theory (Golder et al. 2023). The approach lends itself well to today’s environment, with newly emerging data sources and marketing phenomena that can reveal novel insights and research questions.
Empirics first does not mean empirics only. The EF approach serves theory development by starting with data in novel domains, domains untethered to existing theory, or domains with multiple relevant and possibly conflicting theories. Throughout, attention is paid to the existing literature, with an eye toward generating new theory, concepts, constructs, and conceptual frameworks, as well as uncovering empirical regularities and providing guidance to marketing’s stakeholders.
The goal of this special issue is to publish top-quality research addressing important marketing issues using rigorous EF approaches. Importantly, unlike theory-first (TF) research, which has a linear, deductive template followed by many scholars in the strategy and consumer research domains, empirics first does not follow a linear pathway. Instead, it is guided by substantive research questions rather than by hypotheses, leading to deep real-world insight, careful probing of new phenomena, and high relevance to marketing stakeholders. The special issue aims to showcase how EF approaches can be leveraged for important knowledge advancement across all domains of marketing, including consumer research, strategy, and quantitative research, by generating marketing-relevant insights across a range of substantive topic areas.
What Does EF Research Look Like?
While EF research does not have a fixed format and can take many shapes, it does tend to follow three stages (Golder et al. 2023):
- It finds a research opportunity inspired by the real world of marketing, identifying unaddressed or emergent issues relevant to marketing stakeholders or issues where the literature and the real-world data clash. EF research is particularly apt when extant theory or literature is absent, insufficient, or contradictory, or when there are no empirical regularities.
- It explores the terrain through open-ended (and potentially changing) research questions by generating data (e.g., through experiments or surveys), compiling data (e.g., extant public data), or acquiring data (e.g., from a firm). It examines this data in an open-minded yet purposeful way, informed by the scholar’s prior knowledge of the literature. The findings determine where to probe next, expanding the depth and breadth of the dataset throughout the analysis process while testing the robustness and resilience of the findings.
- Once the discoveries are insightful, the effect sizes are substantial, and the findings are robust, EF moves on to the third stage. This stage includes uncovering empirical regularities, formulating conceptual and theoretical insights, and/or advising stakeholders. Importantly, for EF research to yield generalizable marketing knowledge, abstraction is a crucial element. Abstraction entails going from the empirical specifics to more generalizable ideas, concepts, or relationships. Finally, EF research should be reported congruent with the way it unfolded and not be written up in a TF format with hypotheses, as this amounts to harking (hypothesizing after results are known).
High-impact EF research can emerge from all areas of marketing. We briefly highlight specific relevant issues for consumer, strategy, and quantitative modeling research, while also encouraging papers that use multimethod approaches.
EF for consumer research
EF can lead to novel discovery in marketing-relevant consumer issues, including lab-based research. EF research is guided by open-ended research questions rather than formal hypotheses, does not necessarily build on theory or a singular theoretical lens, does not insist on a single process to explain a phenomenon, is open to null findings as long as there is insight gained, sees a failed robustness check as an inspiration to probe further, and appreciates full disclosure of all findings (including those that would end up in a file drawer in TF research). Furthermore, it does not insist on preregistration as long as the data follow JM’s transparency guidelines, allow for replication, and are analyzed ethically and completely.
EF for strategy research
EF can also enrich strategy research. Rather than following a single-minded overarching conceptual framework based on a named theory developed in a different discipline, era, or context, EF research in strategy can be led by a set of research questions, potentially (but not necessarily) leading to a study framework or even emerging theory that unfolds as the research proceeds. Such a framework may include factors from different theories, augmented with factors drawn from marketing practice. The goal is to derive relevant, new, and robust insights for marketing strategy stakeholders, not to test new theory.
EF research for quantitative modeling
New methods and models, including large language models and machine learning applied to real-world marketing problems, can assist marketing stakeholders in decision-making. EF research in this mold should study actionable independent variables and consequential dependent variables, make a strong case of why the new method could address a marketing-relevant issue that other methods cannot, and offer rich and compelling evidence across one or more datasets on model performance and how decisions can be meaningfully improved.
Within any of the broad areas of marketing or through multimethod approaches, we highlight three opportunities that may be particularly suitable for the EF special issue.
- EF research inspired by new marketing phenomena. The rise of generative AI, the changing role of social media, new laws and regulations and affecting marketing practice, and many more new marketing phenomena could inspire EF research, as long as a case can be made that the current literature or existing theory is insufficient.
- EF research inspired by types of new marketing data. The digitization of consumer−firm interactions, the emergence of blockchain technology, and marketing data on new variables, new entities, and new levels of granularity open the door to EF research studying marketing-relevant questions that were not possible to investigate without these new data.
- EF research inspired by unprecedented data coverage. The rising availability of data across many non-Western countries, the coverage of nontraditional industries and overlooked consumers or consumer segments, and data over very long time series can reveal findings that encompass important new facets that prior literature could not investigate.
How to Make Research More Suitable for the Special Issue on Empirics First
During the EF research process, the following set of questions (inspired by Table 4 in Golder et al. [2023]) may be used to increase the value of the work. These questions should not be understood as a checklist researchers need to follow but rather serve as facilitators to enhance the suitability of the research for the special issue.
| Aspect | Questions |
| Real-world relevance | – Is the phenomenon a determinant of human welfare and/or of enduring stakeholder significance? – Does the research use new data on an important phenomenon? – Is (social) media or business press coverage on this topic/phenomenon incomplete, contradictory, or wrong? |
| Literature | – Is the current literature thin, conflicting, unintuitive, and/or far afield from marketing? – Has the literature been consulted for potential duplication, inspiration, variables/factors to consider and interpretation of the empirics? |
| Research process | – Is the research agenda-free (i.e., does it begin and proceed without fixed ideas about its outcomes)? – Has the investigation incorporated the researcher’s knowledge of the literature? – Has research been deepened (e.g., additional DVs, IVs, control variables, mediators, moderators, boundary conditions) and broadened (e.g., additional industries, organizations, categories, products)? |
| Research outcomes | – Is the phenomenon better understood empirically, conceptually, and/or theoretically? – Is there actionable advice for marketing stakeholders based on causal effects? – Has the research discovered an empirical regularity? – Have the effect sizes received proper attention? Are they economically, managerially, or socially significant? |
| Robustness and generalizability | – Have failed robustness checks been interpreted as learning opportunities in current and/or future research? – Have both simpler models and more sophisticated models yielded consistent results? – Are findings generalizable to other contexts, and do they potentially spark follow-up research? |
| Presentation | – Does the paper explain its discovery process in a clear, honest, and compelling way? – Has the paper closed the loop with motivations for conducting the study in terms of relevance and impact for various stakeholders? |
| Theory | Theory testing and/or development are not required, but some consideration should be given to the following questions: – Does the paper offer plausible (possibly multiple) explanations for its findings? – Have potential new theoretical relationships been proposed? – Have conflicting theories been resolved?Have new frameworks been proposed? – Have new constructs and measures been developed? |
Key Criteria for Publication in the Special Issue
Key criteria that will be used to assess a submission include:
- Novelty of the insights
- Relevance of the novel insights as assessed by the number of real-world marketing stakeholders likely to change their behavior based on the research, the magnitude of their behavioral change, and/or its impact
- The extent to which the paper is true to the EF approach
- The rigor with which the EF approach is conducted and reported
Submission Process
All submissions will go through Journal of Marketing’s double-anonymized review and follow standard norms and processes. Submissions must be made via the journal’s ScholarOne site, with author guidelines available here. For any queries, feel free to reach out to the special issue editors.
Deadline for special issue submissions: February 1, 2026.
Reference
Golder, Peter N., Marnik G. Dekimpe, Jake T. An, Harald J. van Heerde, Darren Kim, and Joseph W. Alba (2023), “Learning from Data: An Empirics-First Approach to Knowledge Generation in Marketing,” Journal of Marketing, 87 (3), 319–36.