Special Issue: Journal of Marketing
Special Issue Editors: Pradeep Chintagunta (University of Chicago), Rajdeep Grewal (University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill), Detelina Marinova (University of Missouri), Rik Pieters (Tilburg University), and Shrihari Sridhar (Texas A&M University)
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Motivation | Research-Driven Apps | Submission Requirements | Special Issue Timeline | FAQs | App Tutorial Videos
Motivation
Marketing scholarship has the potential to benefit society, advance managerial practice, improve consumers’ lives, and contribute to fundamental scientific knowledge.
However, given the typical form and function of academic publications in the discipline, the target audience of marketing academic research (consumers, investors, firms, frontline/middle/senior management, policy makers, as well as other marketing scholars and students) face barriers to understand and adopt research findings. These barriers limit the impact of marketing academic research.
The Journal of Marketing’s vision is to encourage a wide range of approaches that can reduce impact barriers of academic articles and consequently catalyze the message among the target audience to whom marketing scholarship should matter.
This special issue of Journal of Marketing, titled “Marketing Impact with Research-Driven Apps,” emphasizes the integration of research-driven apps into academic articles to enhance understanding, consumption, adoption, and ongoing usage of research findings.
Pradeep Chintagunta, Rajdeep Grewal, Detelina Marinova, Rik Pieters, and Shrihari Sridhar will co-edit the special issue. The editors will not submit manuscripts to the special issue.
Research-Driven Apps
A research-driven app is an online interactive tool that provides a deeper understanding of the usability of the research contribution. It serves as a dynamic computational supplement to a research manuscript, thereby adding form and function to the otherwise static nature of a research publication.
Rather than simply adding an app to the end of an otherwise traditional research manuscript (problem, idea, intended contribution, theory, data, findings, conclusions, discussion, recommendations, and future research), submissions should think of their online interactive tool’s intended usability and implementation as the focal point of research. In this way, developing apps for marketing academic research may stimulate a solution-based mindset among marketing scholars that is reflected in their research output.
An app’s goal depends intricately on the scope and goals of the original research manuscript. The special issue encourages apps with a substantive focus covering a wide variety of approaches, paradigms, questions, and topics. While not exhaustive, the following list presents some types of apps well-suited to marketing academic research:
- Predictors. Predictors offer model-based predictions and thereby depict the interplay among various factors affecting a marketing input, process, or outcome. Some examples include the following:
- Disaggregating the strength of the behavioral effects under various conditions (e.g., three-way interactions) and depicting their underlying process;
- Simulating game theory–based results (e.g., equilibrium outcomes) assuming various hypothetical primitives; and
- Offering what-if predictions to various types of marketing interventions (e.g., targeted advertising) under well-defined market scenarios.
- Optimizers and Recommenders. Optimizers offer normative solutions to improve currently suboptimal marketing decisions made by agents, and recommenders offer superior solutions to current problems marketing stakeholders face. Some examples include the following:
- Recommending a range of marketing mix decision criteria that maximize or minimize firms’ marketing outcomes;
- Offering customized plans, schedules, or interventions that help customers mitigate or enhance their life outcomes; and
- Simulating marketing interventions that maximize or minimize societal outcomes.
- Explorers. Explorers investigate sensitivity of research results to various research design assumptions. Some examples include the following:
- Providing empirical results to a substantive problem across a range of subsamples and estimation methodologies;
- Automating critical synthesis of extant literature across several subtopics; and
- Providing interactive access to a large set of variables that accompany (but are not focal to) the specific research question studied in the manuscript.
- Converters. Converters provide accessible marketing insights through the conversion of unstructured input (e.g., text, audio, videos) to structured data, and models developed in the research framework. Some examples include the following:
- Scoring unstructured data (e.g., text, video) to uncover novel marketing insights (e.g., authenticity, complexity); and
- Modifying sample unstructured marketing input (e.g., sales pitches) into more effective unstructured material based on uncovering underlying characteristics.
Special Issue Submission Requirements
We encourage submissions similar to traditional marketing academic manuscripts submitted to Journal of Marketing that focus on novel, important, and substantive marketing topics. In addition, submissions to the special issue should include a new section titled “App Implementation.” In this section, the author(s) should:
- Describe the problem solved by the app and how it supplements the research contribution of the manuscript.
- Define the audience or the end users targeted by the app and the usefulness of the app to this audience over and above the current situation or available (software or other) solutions. The audience can be broad and include managers, executives, researchers, consumers, policy makers, government, media, general public, other marketing academics, and students.
- Provide a secure, anonymous relatively permanent link to the app, with appropriate instructions on how to use the app and interpret the results.
- Share open-source access to the app to allow accelerated dissemination upon publication.[1]
Ideally, the app implementation informs the problem statement and intended contribution of the research and manuscript.
The evaluation of manuscripts submitted for the special issue will be guided by the following:
- The quality and veracity of the manuscript’s original contribution, like all manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Marketing. Thus, the app cannot substitute for the incremental contribution and validity of the original contribution.
- The contribution of the app relative to alternative apps or commercial software solutions. For example, an existing implementation in software such as R, Python, or Matlab, would reduce the contribution of the app.
- The usefulness and depth of insight enabled by the app itself. Authors are welcome to provide evidence for and/or demonstration of the application and effectiveness of the app in the field.
[1] AMA is working on obtaining official clearance that papers published in the special issue will (1) maintain status quo regarding copyright with the journal article, (2) allow the authors to retain ownership over their individual app’s intellectual property, and (3) ensure AMA has clear rights to house/distribute the app at no cost on behalf of the authors.
Special Issue Timeline
The timeline of the special issue is as follows:
| Event | Time | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Summer AMA Special Issue Kickoff Session | August 13, 2022, Chicago | Authors are welcome to attend a special session at Summer AMA that will feature exemplars of similar research by prominent marketing academics. |
| Online Workshop | November 2022 | Journal of Marketing will host an online workshop that will feature tutorial sessions conducted by experts to help participants to build apps for their own research. |
| Manuscript submission window opens | April 1, 2023 | During the manuscript submission process, authors should upload a separate supplemental file that includes the following: (a) a brief description of how the paper enhances the app (200 words) and (b) a brief description of how the app enhances the paper (200 words). |
| Manuscript submission window closes | January 5, 2024 | |
| Special issue in print and published manuscripts and apps promoted | Spring 2025 |
Frequently Asked Questions
A research-driven app is an online interactive tool that provides a deeper understanding of the usability of the research contribution. It serves as a dynamic computational supplement to a research manuscript, thereby adding form and function to the otherwise static nature of a research publication.
Warren Nooshin L., Matthew Farmer, Tianyu Gu, and Caleb Warren (2021), “Marketing Ideas: How to Write Research Articles that Readers Understand and Cite,” Journal of Marketing, 85(5), 42–57. The goal of the article is to supplement the manuscript’s overarching goal to recognize and repair unclear writing to authors write more impactful articles.
Accordingly, the research-driven app accompanying the paper (http://writingclaritycalculator.com/) uses the underlying method proposed in the paper to analyze input text and output scores pertaining to the concreteness of writing, number of examples, the percentage of sentences that use active voice etc.
Thus, the writing clarity calculator serves as a dynamic computational supplement to a research manuscript, thereby adding form and function to the otherwise static nature of the research publication.
We believe there could be different types of apps based on their purpose as well the research question.
- Predictors offer model-based predictions and thereby depict the interplay among various factors affecting a marketing input, process, or outcome.
- Optimizers offer normative solutions to improve currently suboptimal marketing decisions made by agents, and recommenders offer superior solutions to current problems marketing stakeholders face.
- Explorers investigate sensitivity of research results to various research design assumptions.
- Converters provide accessible marketing insights through the conversion of unstructured input (e.g., text, audio, videos) to structured data, and models developed in the research framework.
In the call for papers, we provide a non-exhaustive list of types of apps well-suited to marketing academic research.
That’s right. The special issue emphasizes the integration of research-driven apps into academic articles to enhance understanding, consumption, adoption, and ongoing usage of research findings. In other words, you could pursue research on any substantive marketing problem.
Papers submitted to the Special Issue will be identical in form to regular issues but for one additional requirement. Submissions to the special issue should include a new section titled “App Implementation.” In this section, the author(s) should:
- Describe the problem solved by the app and how it supplements the research contribution of the manuscript.
- Define the audience or the end users targeted by the app and the usefulness of the app to this audience over and above the current situation or available (software or other) solutions. The audience can be broad and include managers, executives, researchers, consumers, policy makers, government, media, general public, other marketing academics, and students.
- Provide a secure, anonymous relatively permanent link to the app, with appropriate instructions on how to use the app and interpret the results.
- Share open-source access to the app to allow accelerated dissemination upon publication.
- Confirm during the submission process that any hyperlinks in the paper (especially to sites such as OSF, AsPredicted) lead to anonymized material that does not reveal the identity of the authors.
The short answer is no. We are only interested in a working app that serves as a companion to the paper. Our goal is to encourage submissions where the online interactive tool’s intended usability and implementation is intricately intertwined with the focal research goal. In this way, developing apps for marketing academic research may stimulate a solution-based mindset among marketing scholars that is reflected in their research output.
The American Marketing Association is working on obtaining official clearance that papers published in the special issue will (1) maintain status quo regarding copyright with the journal article but (2) allow the authors to retain ownership over their individual app’s intellectual property.
No, JM does not require you to provide your source code to the app. However, (1) all articles published in JM will require compliance to the JM Policy for Research Transparency to ensure correctness, and (2) if you would like to do so, JM will facilitate the distribution through the Special Issue website.
During the review process, the authors are asked to provide a secure, anonymous, relatively permanent link to the app, with appropriate instructions on how to use it and interpret the results. Upon acceptance, AMA will house/distribute the app for three years at no cost on behalf of the authors.
We are currently working with the AMA on this issue and hope to at least secure an extended window of open access so that researchers and practitioners from around the world can access the article for free.
We encourage users of the app (e.g., practitioners) to engage with/consult the authors before implementing the app for commercial purposes. This will not only help companies engage directly with the inventors of the app but also help users clarify the necessary assumptions, bounds, and contingencies associated with the deployment of the app in their setting.
No. The evaluation of manuscripts submitted for the special issue will firstly be guided by the quality and veracity of the manuscript’s original contribution, like all manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Marketing. Thus, the app cannot substitute for the incremental contribution and validity of the original contribution.
It is probably not sufficient if the app is mostly an accessible database-and-mini-analysis tool. It then replaces standard SPSS, Stata, or similar statistical packages without adding sufficient novelty.
Probably not. The app needs to be associated with an incremental contribution and hence have sufficient novelty over and above existing knowledge in marketing.
Absolutely. Journal of Marketing will host an online workshop in November 2022 that will feature demonstrations by experts to help participants get started on their journey to build apps for their own research. Since we are entering a new era of research driven by apps, we believe we are all part of this continuous, exciting, and vibrant new learning opportunity!
The manuscript submission window opens on 4/1/2023. During the manuscript submission process, authors will be required to submit the following: (1) a brief description of how the paper enhances the app (200 words) and (2) a brief description of how the app enhances the paper (200 words). The manuscript submission window closes on 9/30/2023. We expect the special issue in print and published manuscripts and promotion of apps to occur in Spring 2025.
App Tutorial Videos
To facilitate the creation of research-driven apps, JM is pleased to offer two app tutorial videos recorded by ERB members:
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