Abstract
Although the impact of marketing is a recognized priority, current academic practices do not fully support this goal. A research manuscript’s likely influence is difficult to evaluate prior to publication, and audiences differ in their understandings of what “impact” means. This article develops a set of criteria for assessing and enhancing a publication’s impact potential. An article is argued to have greater influence if it changes many stakeholders’ understandings or behaviors on a relevant matter; and makes its message accessible by offering simple and clear findings and translating them into actionable implications. These drivers are operationalized as a checklist of criteria for authors, reviewers, and research supervisors who wish to evaluate and enhance a manuscript’s potential impact. This article invites scholars to further develop and promote these criteria and to participate in establishing impact evaluation as an institutionalized practice within marketing academia.
Highlights
There has been a lingering concern that the impact of marketing is declining, both as a discipline and in the board room (e.g., Clark et al, 2014; Lehmann et al, 2011; Reibstein et al, 2009)
One might argue that “being impactful” has become a mantra: citations are counted for promotion applications; scholars’ reputation is increasingly affected by their h-index; external funding bodies tend to make decisions based on a research project’s expected business or societal impact; and business school accreditation boards and university ranking systems treat impact as a key standard (e.g., Birkinshaw et al, 2016)
Scholars engage in ongoing discussion of how marketing research might be made more relevant, important, and useful (e.g., Bolton, 2020; Kohli & Haenlein, 2021; MacInnis et al, 2020; Stremersch, 2021), so acknowledging that the future of marketing as a science will be defined by its impact
Summary
There has been a lingering concern that the impact of marketing is declining, both as a discipline and in the board room (e.g., Clark et al, 2014; Lehmann et al, 2011; Reibstein et al, 2009). Authors can access advice on how to enhance particular impact-related aspects of a manuscript—for example, by crafting interesting and relevant research questions (e.g., Kohli & Haenlein, 2021; Lange & Pfarrer, 2017; Shugan, 2003) or developing theoretical contributions (e.g., MacInnis, 2011; Makadok et al, 2018)—but there is as yet no comprehensive set of criteria for evaluating the diverse drivers of impact. We identify drivers of impact potential that should inform the development of explicit criteria We identified those drivers by analyzing research articles and editorials that focus on impact and relevance, as well as by reflecting on our own experiences as editors, reviewers, and authors for various journals. As the article’s main outcome, we specify an integrative set of criteria that can be used to evaluate and enhance the likely impact of articles submitted for publication
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