Editorial
Journal of Marketing
JM: Promoting Catalysis in Marketing
Scholarship
Shrihari Sridhar, Cait Lamberton, Detelina Marinova,
and Vanitha Swaminathan
We are excited, honored, and grateful to assume leadership of
Journal of Marketing (JM), the most cited, broadest, and most
read marketing academic journal in the world. JM aims to
connect marketing stakeholders with scholars who have fresh,
bold, and rigorous ideas and whose research offers novel contri-
butions. As we assume the editorship of JM, we are thankful to
the previous editorial team of Christine Moorman, Harald van
Heerde, Page Moreau, and Robert Palmatier for their superhu-
man efforts in galvanizing the journal and enhancing its
impact in the marketing discipline. We are also thankful to
the 30 past editorial teams that have served JM since 1936.
The vision and strategies of each team, and the concomitant
evolution of the intellectual community, have continually
strengthened JM’s standing as a premier research outlet for
the marketing discipline.
Before we share our editorial strategy and initiatives, we
want to highlight the important role played by journals in deter-
mining the influence of marketing scholarship. We believe that
marketing scholarship can serve as a positive source of energy
and spark necessary change for a wide range of stakeholders.
Specifically, we propose that journals can serve the discipline
much like catalysts serve chemical reactions—and we see our-
selves fostering and promoting this role.
Good chemical catalysts act as substrates within which con-
stituent elements encounter and interact with one another.
Likewise, we envision a JM that can facilitate transfer of knowl-
edge among its producers and consumers and, in so doing, drive
deeper engagement among its multiple stakeholders. Good cat-
alysts draw attention to elements that have a unique power to
alter other elements, generate light, or spark processes. Good
catalysts accelerate reactions. They provide alternative, robust
pathways for the adoption and implementation of solutions
that emerge from the processes they foster. Further, good cata-
lysts take part in chemical reactions without being consumed in
the process. Likewise, journals such as ours are poised to serve
as accelerators for constructive dialogue and engagement
among participants, free of agenda or bias. If we manage JM
so as to catalyze our connected stakeholders, we can anticipate
the reactions and processes that unfold in the field that will
2023, Vol. 87(1) 1-9
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uncover unique ways in which society at large uses marketing
scholarship.
Importantly, positioning JM as a catalytic agent is consistent
with the ambition of marketing scholarship to not only support
the marketing academic community but also advance a broader
community of stakeholders, including practitioners, policy
makers, and the world at large. In a rapidly changing, postpan-
demic, technology-led environment, this is more critical than
ever before.
Optimizing JM as a Catalytic Agent
JM’s formal mission to “develop and disseminate knowledge
about real-world marketing questions useful to scholars, educa-
tors, managers, policy makers, consumers, and other societal
stakeholders around the world” is designed to facilitate knowl-
edge transfer among a wide set of stakeholders. To develop
JM’s role as a catalyst, rather than just a disseminator, we will
pursue three main objectives, articulated in the following
sections.
Offering Useful Responses to Important
Marketing Problems
JM is positioned as the broadest premier journal in marketing,
taking pride in covering a panoply of topics. While this
breadth will be maintained organically due to the diverse
nature of our discipline, a good catalyst will be particularly sen-
sitive to elements that have the greatest potential to create useful
Shrihari Sridhar is Joe Foster ’56 Chair in Business Leadership and Research
Director of the Sales Leadership Institute, Mays Business School, Texas A&M
University, USA (email: ssridhar@mays.tamu.edu). Cait Lamberton is Alberto
I. Duran Presidential Distinguished Professor of Marketing, The Wharton
School, University of Pennsylvania, USA (email: catlam@wharton.upenn.edu).
Detelina Marinova is Samuel M. Walton Distinguished Professor of
Marketing, Robert J. Trulaske, Sr. College of Business, University of Missouri,
USA (email: marinovad@missouri.edu). Vanitha Swaminathan is Thomas
Marshall Professor of Marketing and Director of the Katz Center for
Branding, University of Pittsburgh, USA (email: vanitha@katz.pitt.edu).
2 Journal of Marketing 87(1)

Table 1. Promoting Catalysis Through Marketing Scholarship: Self-Reflection for Authors and Reviewers.

Dimension Description Guideposts for Self-Reflection

Offering Useful Responses to
Important Marketing
Problems
Contextualizing the
Institutional Frame of
Scholarship
Striving to Provide
Prescriptive Guidance
Study problems marked by or indicative of significant
worth or consequence by first establishing the
correct target audience for the research and
formulating the research problem for which a “how”
is unclear.
Embrace (1) the circumstances that form and
surround the problem, in terms of which it can be
fully understood, and (2) using both academic and
nonacademic stakeholders as pivotal sources of
input into the generation of new knowledge.
Recommend specific, tangible guidance on the import •
of the research to those within and outside the
academic community.
• How feasible is it for stakeholders to follow the
• What is the nature of the problem this work hopes
to solve, and for whom is this solution necessary?
• How will this knowledge change target
stakeholders’ decisions, behaviors, and policies?
How large, enduring, or systemic might this change
be?
• How might these findings challenge, build on, or
extend the theoretical frameworks offered in past
work, and what new questions might arise as a
result?
• To what extent has this work taken seriously the
context of study, considering the lived experience
and richness of stakeholders involved in this
domain?
• Has the work documented the nature of the
context in which the research was conducted, so
that readers understand the precise nature of the
effects depicted and their likely relevance to other
contexts?
• Has the work been done with attention to the
complexity of the system in which the focal
research question is asked, and findings framed in
terms that recognize a realistic path toward use in
that system?
Is my evidence strong enough to offer prescriptive
guidance and specific solution pathways for a
marketing problem?
prescriptive guidance offered in this paper?
• If possible, have I offered tools or resources that
raise the feasibility of application?

reactions and thereby be relevant to a wide range of audiences.
To this end, we will encourage authors to research, review
teams to support, and Associate Editors to nurture work on
important problems, or those “marked by or indicative of signif-
icant worth or consequence”1 that, at present, lack robust
solutions.
The push to consider important and unsolved real-world
problems is not new for JM. As Kerin (1988, p. 1) notes in
his editorial, JM is open to authors who seek to “stimulate
new research or thinking on a substantive issue not previously
addressed.” In his editorial, Rust (2006, p. 1) identifies how
the “applied orientation for the field ties academic thought in
marketing to the real world, either directly or indirectly.”
However, we propose that JM can do more in this regard. If
we follow through, we should see evidence that (1) we have
reached a larger number of stakeholders, (2) we have reached
stakeholders with an increasingly important status in society,
and (3) we are able to document a larger magnitude of expected
1
Merriam-Webster, s.v. “important,” (accessed September 19, 2022), https://
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/important.
behavioral change in these stakeholders (e.g., Kohli and
Haenlein 2021).
We propose that at JM, the importance of work is largely
driven by the usefulness of its findings in solving a given audi-
ence’s problems. As such, we suggest that authors writing for
JM begin research projects with an “audience-backward” per-
spective (Van Heerde et al. 2021). That is, first identify the
correct target audience for the research (not only an academic
audience but also other audiences; e.g., managers/senior execu-
tives, consumers, citizens, governments).2 Then, from this audi-
ence’s perspective, formulate the research problem for which a
“how” or a “why” is currently unclear. Following this approach
will help authors appreciate the stakeholder’s circumstances and
stimulate self-reflection about the potential utility of the
research to the target audience. If we begin with an audience’s
2
A caveat is that that authors may not always know (or be able to judge) the full
gamut of usefulness during knowledge production. Accordingly, one might
think of attributes such as “heuristic value” or “future fertility” to complement
“usefulness.” We acknowledge this inherent property of knowledge. We also
believe that the directive of usefulness orients an author toward proposing an
audience-directed solution as an important by-product of a manuscript. We
thank Manjit Yadav for raising this important point.
Sridhar et al.
needs, whether we speak to our audience using experimental, qual-
itative, quantitative, or conceptual approaches matters far less than
our ability to answer their question with insight and rigor.
We also propose that papers published in JM build future
theoretical frameworks and test the limits of past scholarship.
To better understand the importance of useful theoretical knowl-
edge in marketing, consider the economic historian Joel Mokyr
(2002), who distinguishes between “omega” and “lambda”
knowledge. According to Mokyr, omega knowledge carefully
observes and explains decontextualized phenomena. For example,
omega knowledge in marketing might describe firms’ responses
to changes in society, explain psychological processes underlying
creativity, or offer a theoretical account predicting the outcome of
a new firm’s entry into a certain type of market. However, it is
not necessary that omega knowledge be directly applied to solve
a problem—and undervaluing such research because it is not
used in this way would be misguided. Rather, it is the job of
lambda knowledge producers to transform omega knowledge into
concrete prescriptive approaches, accessible techniques, shareable
inventions, problem-driven pragmatic insights, and other practical
applications, as well as to raise questions that inform future produc-
tion of omega knowledge. By doing this, lambda knowledge
enlarges the significance and reach of omega’s work. Further,
lambda knowledge informs and is informed by omega knowl-
edge—the application of our findings in the real world should
allow for theoretical advances, raise new questions, show the
limits of prior thought, and spark new inquiries. We propose that
embracing this latter focus will help JM serve as a practical
knowledge-generating device for marketing stakeholders.
We offer the following guideposts for authors and reviewers
to evaluate the usefulness and importance of JM submissions
both before they submit their work to JM and during various
stages of the review process:
• What is the nature of the problem this work hopes to
solve, and for whom is this solution necessary?
• How will this knowledge change target stakeholders’
decisions, behaviors, and/or policies? How large, endur-
ing, or systemic could this change be?
• How might these findings challenge, build on, or extend
the theoretical frameworks offered in previous research—
and what new questions arise, or might arise, as a result?
We summarize the guideposts in Table 1. We hope that thinking
through these questions will (1) prompt authors to establish this
characteristic in their work and (2) enable review teams to better
evaluate the success with which this objective is achieved.
Contextualizing the Institutional Frame of
Scholarship
A good catalyst facilitates the transmission of energy among
different elements. Often, scientific research presumes that
this is best done by abstraction—that is, removing a phenome-
non from the messy world in which it exists, so that cleaner rela-
tionships can be observed and translated into general statements
3
about similar phenomena. In our context, however, this trans-
mission of energy can be facilitated by acknowledging the
social and economic ecosystem that shapes the marketing
problem and solution.
For example, Narayan and Kankanhalli (2021) investigate
how rural consumers in India shift their expenditures toward
branded consumption when they migrate to urban areas. The
authors find that factors such as household income and mobile
phone ownership affect household consumption of branded
products. The authors provide rich institutional details about
(1) how a migrant is defined as per Indian census rules, (2)
the importance of economic and social remittance for recent
migrant-sending households in Indian villages, and (3) the def-
inition of first-degree and second-degree neighbors in densely
populated villages. This, in turn, provides important guidance
and information to enable them to elegantly develop their con-
ceptual and empirical framework and weave in the circum-
stances that inform this framework. Their institutional immersion
in household neighborhood geography allows them to develop
an instrumental variable that satisfies both the criteria of exclusion
and relevance. From a practical standpoint, the contextualized
framework helps demonstrate the complex interplay of the
factors that affect household consumption and catalyze practical
implications for brand marketers regarding marketing resource
allocation in 650,000 villages in India.
We encourage authors to provide deep and immersive docu-
mentation of the setting where their research is focused and,
where necessary, to work with scholars from other fields to
help frame their research question and extrapolate meaningful
implications of their contributions. We also encourage authors
to highlight the diversity of the applicability of their findings
and insights to help provide a wide epistemic base for the adop-
tion of the useful and prescriptive guidance. Such contextualiza-
tion continues to elevate JM’s position as a forum for generating
new theory, new frameworks, and new predictions for scholars
and practitioners, especially when empirical insights are
unavailable (Varadarajan 1996).3 We offer the following guide-
posts for authors to critically evaluate whether their research
objective and execution are effectively contextualized:
• To what extent has this work taken seriously the context
of study and considered the lived experience and richness
of stakeholders in this domain?
• Has the work documented the nature of the context in
which the research was conducted, so that readers under-
stand the precise nature of the effects depicted and their
likely relevance to other contexts?
• Has the work been done with attention to the complexity
of the system in which the focal research question is
asked, and are the findings framed in terms that recognize
a realistic path toward use in that system?
Striving to Provide Prescriptive Guidance
A ripe environment for catalytic influence is present when the reac-
tion pathways for the agents involved in the interaction are
4 Journal of Marketing 87(1)

specified: it cannot simply be that something happens, but that we Table 2. Achieving Catalysis: Our Editorial Focus and Supporting
know how it happens and how it can be changed. Accordingly, it is Initiatives.
important for authors, when possible, to articulate prescriptive Editorial Focus Supporting Initiatives
guidance to help stakeholders leverage the usefulness of the find-
ings and achieve their objectives. Although marketing academic Maintaining JM’s Breadth and • Big tent mindset
research has the potential to offer rich prescriptive guidance for a Substantiveness • Large and diverse AE and ERB
• Updated topic and method codes
multitude of stakeholders outside of the natural academic habitat
Fostering Stakeholder • Marketing as a Multidisciplinary
—including academics from other disciplines, managers, senior
Interactions with Special Knowledge-Creation Engine
executives, consumers, citizens, and government agencies—we Issues • Marketing Impact with
often stop short of recommending the use of specific, tangible deci- Research-Driven Apps
sion tools or methods, either within or outside the academic com- • New Paradigms for a New World
munity. Without prescription of this type, marketing scholarship Building a Positive and • Rating system for AEs and
cannot be tested and refined. Constructive Review reviewers
Yang, Zhang, and Kannan (2022) offer an excellent example of Community • Reviewer workshops
the type of prescription that may not only raise a research’s impact • Data transparency and integrity
policy
but also fuel further knowledge development. These authors use • Developmental editors
social media users’ brand engagement data to uncover underlying Kickstarting Reverberation • Maintain and improve insights for
market structure. Importantly, they offer an online tool that provides After Acceptance practice, press and classroom
an interactive visualization of market structure among brands, • Maintain consistent outreach to
which allows managers to understand their closest competitors prospective authors and aspiring
across a range of categories (e.g., beauty, sporting goods). This scholars
tool gives guidance about the ways managers can most effectively • Create collaborative partnerships
with media outlets
compete within a market. Because managers can use this tool,
• Facilitate the development of apps
knowledge is transferred across stakeholders. As they learn from through workshops
this tool, their experience can form the basis of new knowledge. • Promote published
If we are to offer prescriptive guidance, we must take seriously research-driven apps
the risks and costs associated with these recommendations.
Asking a firm to reallocate portions of its marketing budget, a cus-
tomer to change their household shopping habits, or a regulator to to occur. We ask the JM community to support us in preserving
choose one policy recommendation over another introduces the and further developing the elements we see as critical for our
possibility of opportunity costs, changed relationships, and unin- role: continuity, curation, constructiveness, and celebration.
tended consequences. It is our responsibility to frame recommenda- We describe each of these dimensions next, with reference to
tions in terms of both costs and benefits. specific initiatives and special issues designed to invite partici-
To highlight prescriptive guidance arising from scholarship, pation. Table 2 summarizes formative aspects of each
we urge authors to consider and identify what executable dimension.
instructions they can provide based on their findings. For
example, one could offer guidance to firms on serving a
diverse consumer base during societal unrest, fostering creativ- Maintaining JM’s Breadth and
ity in high-tech product development, or adaptively responding
to a new competitor’s entry. More generally, one could think of Substantiveness
guideposts such as, The prior editorial team stressed the importance of JM’s “big
tent” position: to be marketing’s most inclusive journal open
• Is my evidence strong enough to offer prescriptive guid- to any type of marketing scholarship (Moorman et al. 2019).
ance and specific solution pathways for a marketing The previous team also stressed the importance of ecological
problem? value, or “the degree to which research reflects and is relevant
• How feasible is it for stakeholders to follow the prescrip- to marketing as it exists and evolves among marketing stake-
tive guidance offered? Can I provide an analysis that sug- holders and marketing ecosystems” for the discipline (Van
gests that the benefits obtained will outweigh the costs? Heerde et al. 2021, p. 1). Our focus on creating catalytic knowl-
• Have I offered tools or resources that raise the feasibility edge embraces these ideas. We encourage articles to take on
of application? novel problems, with diverse data and approaches, and move
beyond well-established areas and well-known concepts.
Designing a Catalytic Community: A Shared To support JM’s promise of being the most inclusive journal in
the discipline, we have maintained the size and diversity of JM’s
Commitment team of Associate Editors (AEs), and Editorial Review Board
There is no way that JM can play this role without a commit- (ERB). JM’s AE and ERB community is the largest of all the
ment from the community in which the catalysis is intended major journals in the discipline. We have recruited this community
Sridhar et al.
as a signal of our openness to align the composition of the review
team to process papers that (1) take fresh perspectives on new or
neglected topics as well as (2) apply new perspectives and
methods to existing topics. We have further revised JM’s topic
and methods codes to account for a wider range of manuscripts,
including those that cover recent developments in the marketplace.
Finally, we will maintain JM’s strong historical tradition of
publishing conceptual papers, with an emphasis on articles
that generate indigenous and contextualized knowledge. We
will make a concerted effort to align the composition of our edi-
torial teams to process such papers.
Fostering Stakeholder Interactions via
Special Issues
To spur interactions among the many stakeholders served by
JM, we are launching three special issues. First, as a means of
expanding the boundaries of the marketing academic discipline,
we have announced an initiative titled “Marketing as a
Multidisciplinary Knowledge-Creation Engine,” edited by our
team. Many of the marketing challenges we face present prob-
lems that require multiple disciplinary lenses. For example,
studying the cultural underpinnings of authenticity
(Thompson and Kumar 2022) or scraping web data with preci-
sion and integrity (Boegershausen et al. 2022). For these and
other complex problems, using only a marketing lens may
result in incomplete and suboptimal solutions. Against this
backdrop, articles submitted to this initiative should (1) focus
on substantive topics and adopt a multidisciplinary perspective,
(2) make a case for why a multidisciplinary perspective offers
an important contribution, and (3) ideally be driven by a coau-
thor team wherein at least one author has their primary appoint-
ment in a marketing department and at least one other author has
their primary appointment outside a marketing department.
Second, as a means of enhancing the prescriptiveness of our
research, we are launching a special issue titled “Marketing
Impact with Research-Driven Apps,” edited by Pradeep
Chintagunta, Rajdeep Grewal, Detelina Marinova, Rik Pieters,
and Shrihari Sridhar. Given the typical form and function of aca-
demic publications in the discipline, the target audience of market-
ing academic research (consumers, investors, firms, frontline/
middle/senior management, policy makers, and other marketing
scholars and students) face barriers to understand and adopt
research findings. These barriers limit the impact of marketing aca-
demic research. This special issue emphasizes the integration of
research-driven apps into academic articles to enhance understand-
ing, consumption, adoption, and ongoing usage of research find-
ings. A research-driven app is an online interactive tool that
provides a deeper understanding of the usability of the research con-
tribution. It serves as a dynamic computational supplement to a
research manuscript, thereby adding form and function to the oth-
erwise static nature of a research publication. Rather than adding
an app to the end of an otherwise traditional research manuscript
(problem, idea, intended contribution, theory, data, findings, con-
clusions, discussion, recommendations, and future research), the
5
intended usability and implementation of the research findings
into an online interactive tool should be a focal point from the
outset of research until submission of the manuscript. 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. For example, Warren et al. (2021) find that
academic writing can be difficult to understand due to practices
such as abstraction, use of technical language, and passive
writing. The authors call for scholars to overcome the curse of
knowledge, and they provide an app and a tutorial to authors to rec-
ognize and repair unclear writing. Accordingly, submissions to the
special issue should include a new section titled “App
Implementation.” In this section, the author(s) should (1) describe
the problem solved by the app and how it supplements the research
contribution of the manuscript, (2) define the audience or the end
users targeted by the app and the usefulness of the app to this audi-
ence beyond the current situation or available (software or other)
solutions, and (3) provide a secure, anonymous, and relatively per-
manent link to the app, with appropriate instructions on how to use
the app and interpret the results.
Finally, we are launching a special issue titled “New
Paradigms for a New World,” which will ask marketing scholars
to reimagine the world of marketing in the wake of recent signifi-
cant disruptions. These disruptions to marketing practice—
ranging from the COVID pandemic; the impact of new technolog-
ical advances such as artificial intelligence, the metaverse, and
virtual reality; and the recognition of vast social and economic dis-
parities as well as political divisions across the globe—have
resulted in fundamental changes in consumer behavior and in
how marketing is organized and conducted. The special issue
will challenge our existing frameworks and assumptions and
introduce new frameworks to address these changes. Submitted
articles should not only describe the present landscape but also
help set theoretical foundations for future study. As such, they
should strive to achieve one or more of the following: (1) create
new theories or frameworks to reframe how we view specific phe-
nomena, (2) examine previously underexplored theoretical rela-
tionships or processes, (3) identify new mediators or moderators
of existing relationships or processes that reflect these disruptions,
(4) extend previously demonstrated effects/frameworks to incor-
porate these disruptions, (5) create new theories in “white
spaces,” where there is no theory to explain specific phenomena,
or (6) develop new constructs to reflect/represent new phenomena
when existing constructs are not available.
Building a Positive and Constructive Review
Community
A catalyst cannot perform its function if it destroys or distorts
the elements with which it interacts. Rather, it should find and
maximize the power inherent in each. This organic sense of con-
ceptual and methodological care is important to preserve by
incentivizing reviews that are constructive and thorough as
well as choosing a sensible mix of reviewers and AE for
every manuscript as a first step.
6 Journal of Marketing 87(1)
Authors submit a paper and go through years of review so
that we can help them improve their work, not bury or unrecog-
nizably alter it. We will maintain JM’s encouragement to AEs
and reviewers to instill a “not wrong” mindset when it comes
to rigor. This approach calls for gatekeepers to be humble and
accepting of the notion that no paper is perfect, and “perfect”
should not become the enemy of “good.” Moreover, in line
with Kohli and Haenlein (2021), we ask that reviewers consider
if the probability of wrong conclusions from a piece of research
is acceptably low. This shifts the reviewer mindset from exclu-
sively focused on method to a combination of method and
substance.
Second, we will encourage the reviewer community to
embrace a solution-oriented mindset when improving the
rigor of a manuscript. This requires the reviewer, AE, and
editor to put themselves in the author’s shoes, then provide
reparative, specific strategies to address flaws with the current
state of the research. Examples of a solution-oriented mindset
include (1) spotting an experimental confound and addressing
how to control for it; (2) noting if the logic for a hypothesis
does not make sense, pointing out where the logic breaks
down, and suggesting possibilities for how to address it; and
(3) raising concerns with the use of an instrument and, if possi-
ble, offering feasible alternative instruments. We will also main-
tain the annual feedback system where the Coeditors rate the
AEs and the AEs in turn rate the reviewers on constructiveness
and thoroughness, while maintaining turnaround times.
Third, less experienced reviewers tend to be negatively
inclined, an issue that is endemic to the marketing discipline.
We intend to conduct reviewer workshops open to all ad hoc
reviewers and ERB members of JM. In this workshop, attendees
will not only receive advice on the tenets of writing a good
review from stellar AEs and past Editors but also go through
simulated review scenarios in small groups. Through this
active engagement, we hope that attendees will enter into a self-
reflection process that should increase their preparedness to
incorporate the lessons into their future efforts and lead to pos-
itive and constructive community-building.
Fourth, as a commitment to transparency, we are in the early
stages of putting in place a data transparency policy. For JM, the
reason for such a policy is clear: if we are to make strong pre-
scriptions, our conclusions need to be based on the soundest evi-
dence possible. When undergirded in this way, authors should
have greater confidence in their conclusions. As such, this
data transparency and integrity initiative will also allow
authors to write marketing implications sections that are
bolder, more directly prescriptive, and realistic.
Finally, because of disparity in experience and access to rel-
evant resources, some scholars, particularly outside North
America, might face greater challenges in navigating the desk
reject hurdle at JM. Yet, such underrepresented authors often
bring new perspectives and tackle previously overlooked but
significant problems faced by large populations across the world.
Guided by the catalytic function of JM, we aim to provide such
scholars additional support for success in the form of developmen-
tal feedback and constructive instructions from more advanced
scholars (whom we denote as “Developmental Editors”) even if
the papers are desk rejected, while setting expectations about
what it will take for a paper to enter the review process at JM.
Kickstarting Reverberation After Acceptance
Fireworks are among the most visible catalyzing agents—and
their connection to celebration is not, for JM, accidental. The
previous editorial team and AMA Support Center team have
achieved great success by celebrating the work published in
the journal, which allows us both to recognize the efforts of
author and review teams and to expand the impact of our
research beyond the academic audience.
To ensure celebration at JM, we will continue to complement
each focal piece of scholarship (i.e., articles) with a range of
retelling strategies to increase its academic and nonacademic
impact. Accordingly, we will continue using Scholarly
Insights to translate the work published in JM into practical
implications for practitioners and policy makers, and maintain
a press release archive and posting strategies on LinkedIn and
Twitter to generate awareness among a wide range of JM audi-
ences. In addition, we will work to create collaborative partner-
ships with media outlets (e.g., Harvard Business Review, Sloan
Management Review, The Conversation, Forbes) and encour-
age them to look for original scholarly content from authors
and leverage a current story (related to arts, corporations, gov-
ernment, politics and policy, sports, or society) to offer a
fresh and scientific view. We will supply authors with a
summary of the content prepared by the JM team to help
them create these pitches for journalistic outlets.
JM’s Insights in the Classroom aims to extend the reverber-
ation of the content in JM articles by asking authors to think
about their papers from an instructional perspective for adoption
in class sessions involving practicing or soon-to-be marketing
practitioners. Again, we will continue to work with the AMA
Support Center team to enhance the modality and tone of the
content, to make them even more effective and accessible to
instructors in marketing.
Propelled by the Marketing Impact with Research-Driven
Apps special issue, we will host research-driven apps published
in JM and/or emanating from articles published in marketing aca-
demia on the JM website. The objective of the website will be to
disseminate these apps to target constituents (i.e., practitioners,
researchers, policy makers, and authors) who aim to employ
this newly generated lambda knowledge in their work. In addition,
we will host app-development workshops, featuring tutorial ses-
sions conducted by research-driven app experts to enable partici-
pants to build their own apps for their research.
Our Hope for the Future: JM as an Ecosystem
of Interactions
The need for greater change is constant, and our hope to collec-
tively push our boundaries of influence should also be a cons-
tant. Table 3 summarizes the success metrics that could reflect
Sridhar et al. 7

Table 3. Expanding Stakeholder Impact.

Success Metrics That Support and

Stakeholder Locus of Current Impact
Authors • Enhances credibility of
scholarship
• Supports scholars’
alignment with work
incentives and promotion
Business schools • Enhances business school
research health
• Provides materials to
support educators
Marketing • Builds field citations and
academic impact factor
community • Offers a high-prestige
publication outlet
• Bridges subdisciplines in
marketing
Marketing • Disseminates in
practice accessible formats
• Offers links to
organizations (MSI, AMA)
World at large • Develops effective
functional experts
Expanding Locus of Impact
• Offers evidence of application in practice •
• Promotes recognition of contributions by
practitioners, policy makers, and other
stakeholders
• Enhances the meaning of authors’ work,
elevating its role in the marketplace and in •
sparking societal change
• Further enhances business school
teaching
• Increases external support for research
• Strengthens institutional integrity and
leadership within the university
• Offers insights for training of
undergraduate students as future
marketing leaders
• Consolidates a storehouse of indigenous, •
organic, and idiosyncratic knowledge
• Stands as able ally and source of cyclical
input for omega disciplines and scholars
• Feeds expanded reverberation strategy,
offering multiple additional means of
access and engagement.
• Aids smaller firms (in addition to large
ones), which tend to be more agile in
implementation but typically lack access
to lambda knowledge and resources that
larger firms possess
• Fosters usable, important, and credible
knowledge creation to act as an engine for
the market’s continued evolution.
Expanded Locus of Impact
Number of apps downloaded from the
JM website and/or requested by
practitioners
• Number of press and media coverage
instances
Number of Twitter, LinkedIn, and other
social media likes and mentions
• Number of invited talks by practitioners
• Number of JM Insights for the
Classroom downloads
• Number of JM articles, tools, and apps
used in the classroom
• Tracking the q-quality (i.e., practical
importance) of faculty research
productivity
Number of JM article citations in
academic disciplines outside of
marketing
• Number of JM submissions by
multidisciplinary teams
• Number of Scholarly Insights downloads
• Number of JM article downloads by
practitioners
• Number of apps downloaded by
practitioners
• Number of JM subscriptions by
practitioners
• Number of JM article citations in
practitioner publications and outlets
(e.g., white papers, books, websites)
• New collaborations with practitioners
• Number of article citations by policy
makers (e.g., EPA, CDC; governmental
and nonprofit agencies and institutions)
• Number of Scholarly Insights downloads
by policy makers
• New collaborations with policy makers
• Mentions in consumer-generated media
(e.g., blogs, influencer-created content,
reviews)

Note: MSI = Marketing Science Institute; EPA = Environmental Protection Agency; CDC = Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

that marketing scholarship is expanding its locus and providing
greater illumination.
As a leading marketing journal, JM impacts authors by serving
as a signal of the credibility of an author’s body of scholarship. By
our dissemination efforts and resulting impact factor, we also add
value by building the academic reputation of authors. However,
many business schools are now asking not only about academic
impact but also whether faculty can provide evidence of their
work’s societal impact. By focusing on how JM can speed up pro-
gress, our goal is to help authors find evidence of this societal
impact—that is, by creating engagement with nonacademic
audiences, positioning authors as sources of practical insights,
and having a more established seat at the table in times of societal
need. As Table 3 shows, we might begin to measure this impact
by citations (within and beyond marketing journals and in
practitioner-focused publications), downloads, popular press men-
tions, social media engagement, use in the classroom, and further
submissions to JM.
Turning to business schools, JM is at present primarily seen
as a mechanism to improve the r-quality (rigor) of faculty
research productivity and thereby improve a business school’s
research health or ranking. At the same time, we recognize
8 Journal of Marketing 87(1)
that business schools are under increasing pressure from stu-
dents, alumni, and administrations both to prepare students for
the current marketplace and to prove their institutional value.
By being a catalytic influence, JM and the marketing discipline
can collectively improve the q-quality (i.e., practical impor-
tance) of faculty research productivity. The q-quality of the
research expands the impact of research on business schools
by positively impacting teaching health, external support, and
institutional integrity (Stremersch, Winer, and Camacho 2021).
What about JM’s impact on the marketing discipline? A rou-
tinized approach in which our journals are judged against other
journals within and outside the discipline includes analyses such
as journal citations, impact factors, and inclusion in prestigious
compilation of journal lists curated by third parties and accred-
itation bodies (e.g., Key et al. 2020; Varadarajan 2020). These
metrics are reflective of the current outcome or state of influence
of our journals, rather than the systems and processes that gen-
erate said influence. A focus on being a catalytic influence can
make JM a storehouse of indigenous, organic, and idiosyncratic
knowledge and thereby serve as an able ally for such inventions
in omega disciplines, as well as a source of knowledge export to
others. Indeed, Kohli (2009, p. 1) encourages “organic (indige-
nous) innovation in marketing—that is, ideas, concepts, and
theories that are new to the world, not just to marketing, and
further our understanding of marketing issues.” As Table 3
shows, we might begin to measure this impact by article down-
loads, citations within and across disciplines, and citations in
practice-oriented journals.
JM has a critical and impactful role in shaping the minds of
marketing practice through the facilitation of improved decision
making in for-profit and nonprofit organizations. As an aca-
demic community, we frequently share our academic work
with practitioners to engage with, learn from, and shape their
views. JM currently uses Scholarly Insights and several other
retelling strategies to encourage readership and to enhance our
ability to shape and influence marketing practice. Yet, agents
who practice marketing seldom claim to even read marketing
journals. A sustained emphasis on conducting audience-backward
research could result in knowledge transfer from marketing practi-
tioners to form the basis of useful and generalizable theories (e.g.,
Zeithaml et al. 2020) and insights from marketing scholarship to per-
meate the day-to-day beliefs and actions of marketing practitioners.
As Table 3 shows, we might begin to measure this impact by the
number of practice-oriented publications that carry our findings
and the use of our research by practitioners.
Finally, what about JM’s impact on the world at large? For
much of the past three decades, marketing scholars have
focused on getting marketing “a seat at the table” to help legit-
imize the value of marketing for the firm, avoid alienation
(Lehmann 2004), and demonstrate that marketing-focused
C-suite executives deliver financial performance and credibility
to the firm (Germann, Ebbes, and Grewal 2015). Through an
emphasis on being a catalytic influence, we can recognize the
impact of marketing beyond the firm, on topics such as sustain-
ability and climate concerns, economic and social empowerment,
health and well-being, and marketing in subsistence economies
(Chandy et al. 2021). Thus, we can expand the role of marketers
from being functional experts to effective instruments of cus-
tomer value, thereby becoming increasingly relevant to consumers,
practice, society, and government. As Table 3 shows, we might
begin to measure this impact by the number of article citations
by policy makers (e.g., Environmental Protection Agency,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, governmental and
nonprofit agencies and institutions), research emerging due to col-
laborations with policy makers, and mentions in consumer-
generated media (e.g., blogs, influencer-created content, reviews).
Conclusion
As we join the lineage of 30 past Editors in Chief and their
teams, we see that they have treated their responsibility with
humility, selflessness, patience, and utmost integrity and have
influenced the next generation of scholars and practitioners.
They have published work ambitious in its scope yet grounded
in its application. They have fostered and encouraged a commu-
nity that crosses methodological, topical, and geographic
boundaries. And in so doing, they have maintained a delicate
balance of continuity and renewal strategies (Stewart 1999).
We begin our editorial journey with a hope to continue this
tradition and to embrace the goal to promote catalysis in market-
ing scholarship. We recognize and sincerely value the efforts of
a large team who ensure that JM’s mission is accomplished on a
daily basis. These include the members of the AMA staff who
work with JM (T.J. Anderson, Jess Barselow, Hannah Finkelstein,
Michelle Kritselis, Marilyn Stone, and Matt Weingarden), JM
staff and students who support the production of Scholarly
Insights and JM Insights in the Classroom content (led by Holly
Howe and Demi Oba), the ad hoc reviewers and ERB members
who work tirelessly to help authors succeed, the AEs who take a
leadership role and vested interest in the impact of articles, the
Advisory Board, and AMA’s VP of Publications (Ron Hill), who
will help us lead and guide JM through the next three years. We
look forward to serving with vigor and invite you to join us!
Acknowledgments
The authors greatly appreciate the input of Ron Hill, Ajay Kohli,
Christine Moorman, Rik Pieters, Marilyn Stone, Matt Weingarden,
and Manjit Yadav on previous versions of this editorial.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article
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