JM Editorial Cornerstones

By Hari Sridhar, Cait Lamberton, Detelina Marinova, and Vanitha Swaminithan

In our role as editors, we envision Journal of Marketing (JM) as a catalyst that can facilitate transfer of knowledge among its producers and consumers and, in so doing, drive deeper engagement among its multiple stakeholders. Accordingly, our editorial philosophy will utilize the following cornerstones:

Cornerstone 1 | Inclusivity: JM focuses on the study of substantive marketing problems to generate theoretical and empirical insights for a wide variety of stakeholders (e.g., academics across disciplines, firms, consumers, managers, executives, policy makers). We will maintain JM’s position of being marketing’s most inclusive journal open to any type of marketing scholarship. Accordingly, we have maintained the size and diversity of JM’s team of Associate Editors and Editorial Review Board.
Cornerstone 2 | Utility: We will adopt the perspective that the usefulness of findings, inventions, or output is central to their value. We strongly encourage authors to follow an “audience-backward” approach to formulate their research questions, so as to sharpen their stance regarding the usefulness of research. We urge authors to offer marketing implications that are bold, realistic, and prescriptive, to highlight the potential utility of the research to the target audience.
Cornerstone 3 | Contextualization: JM curates original and contextualized marketing knowledge, to embrace the notion that nonacademic stakeholders are recipients of our output, as well as pivotal sources of input into new knowledge generation. We encourage authors to develop and critique indigenous theory, frameworks, and predictions. We also encourage authors to engage in interdisciplinary import and export of ideas.
Cornerstone 4 | Integrity: JM supports the discipline’s quest for increased data transparency and integrity. We stand for the view that if our discipline is to make strong prescriptions, our conclusions must be based on sound evidence. When undergirded in this way, JM’s multiple stakeholders can and should have greater confidence in their conclusions.
Cornerstone 5 | Constructiveness: JM is committed to concerted day-to-day efforts to uphold a fair, thorough, helpful, constructive, and timely review process. We will maintain the annual feedback system in which the Editors rate the Associate Editors and the Associate Editors in turn rate the reviewers on constructiveness and thoroughness. To develop a culture of developmental support at the grassroots level, we will conduct reviewer workshops to help reviewers and aspiring reviewers go through simulated review scenarios in small groups with senior leaders in the discipline.
Cornerstone 6 | Amplification: JM will celebrate authors’ scholarly contributions, with the intention that JM’s role in creating impact should go beyond authors and the marketing academic community, and also transcend business schools, marketing, and business practice, to impact the world at large. We will work with and encourage authors to retranslate the findings of JM articles into forms suitable for consumption by a large and diverse set of stakeholders. We will also encourage the integration of research-driven apps into academic articles to enhance understanding, consumption, adoption, and ongoing usage of research findings.

We invite you to join us in our collective goals to help JM create catalytic impact and spur the next generation of marketing discoveries and inventions.