Elections, Ideation, and Scholarship

Abstract

The election season is upon us. Whatever your political persuasion, elections are wonderful sources of ideas for research. When the sparring, hyperbole, and vitriol are put aside, elections provide a time for in-depth discussions of issues that matter to society. Many of these issues are at the intersection of the roles of markets and government. Thus, they suggest opportunities for scholarship that would be especially appropriate for JPPM .T he political debate also provides an opportunity to calibrate our research contributions by comparing the content of JPPMwith the issues that arise in an election cycle. Ideally, the scholarship published in JPPM places more emphasis on broad, strategic, societal issues and less emphasis on more tactical issues. Such strategic issues focus on problem and opportunity identification, the implications of alternative ways of framing problems and opportunities, and the implications of such framings for approaches to solving problems or realizing opportunities. This is in contrast to a more tactical approach that focuses on the analysis of specific solutions, whether market driven or government driven, to already-defined problems. The economy (including the roles of innovation, product and service development, and foreign trade), health care, privacyandthetrade-offbetweenpersonalprivacyandpublic security, and the environment (with its many different tradeoffs related to jobs, quality of life, long-term versus shorttermoutcomes),andtheprotectionofvulnerablepopulations, among others, are topics that appear routinely in the pages of JPPM and overlap the political debate in the United States and around the world. JPPM offers important insights about these topics. The election debates should also inform the topicsthat appearinthepagesofJPPM.Policy,bydefinition, includes a political dimension that should be reflected in discussions of problems, opportunities, and solutions that populate the pages of JPPM. This does not mean JPPM shouldbeavehicleforadvocacyorapoliticalsciencejournal. It does mean that the realities of political processes, legislation, rule making, and litigation need to be recognized and explored in discussions of public policy implications that appear in JPPM. The articles that are published in JPPM do a very good job of exploring consumer issues at the intersection of marketing and public policy. The journal also publishes very strong, rigorous evaluations of policy interventions, especially in such areas as labeling, warnings, communication of information to consumers, and programs that (1) encourage healthier and less riskybehaviors, (2) promote environmental sensitivity and responsible use of resources, and (3) protect and improve the quality of life of vulnerable consumers, disadvantagedconsumers,and consumers atlarge.We can be proud of our contributions to these areas. However, we could and should do more to proactively identify and address solutions. This is a very large gap that needs to be filled. The analog to this gap in the commercial world is marketing strategy. Identification of market opportunities created by the ways in which consumers behave is important and necessary, as is the evaluation of specific products, services, programs, and business models once they have been identified. Between these two activities is an equally important activity associated with identifying strategies that translate the opportunities into successful businesses. It is the same in the policy arena, and this is an important gap missing in the pages of JPPM.