A key to successfully publishing a conceptual research paper is crafting a compelling, well-communicated storyline, while contributing new theoretical insights to the chosen field. This editorial offers a step-by-step guide for crafting such a storyline. To enhance accessibility, it employs the metaphor of a "conference room" to integrate insights from prior 'how-to' guides on writing conceptual research papers. Additionally, the editorial includes a flowchart to help authors in assessing whether their manuscript's storyline is ready for submission.

As social media increasingly permeates everyday life, ethical concerns about its use are coming into sharper focus. At the same time, the ethical issues involved in social media marketing have received somewhat limited attention from marketing research and practice. Therefore, many scholars are calling out for a better understanding of the role of ethics in social media marketing decisions. Current marketing ethics theories do not sufficiently consider the unique dynamics of social media. To aid researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, we propose a theoretical framework to address issues in social media marketing ethics built on theories of normative and descriptive ethics. This framework considers the normative and descriptive ethics within firm-internal and firm-external factors in the fields of law, regulation and norms, platform conditions, and stakeholder value. Then, applying a thematically built systematic literature review, we identify and discuss five distinct themes of research in social media marketing ethics: (I) advertising and customer–brand relationships; (II) the dark side of social media; (III) privacy; (IV) fake news; and (V) emerging research. These themes and their implications are discussed using the proposed theoretical framework. Our study provides a comprehensive overview and synthesis of ethical challenges in social media marketing and suggests possible research avenues for the future. In doing so, it outlines pressing issues that require attention from researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to ensure an ethically sustainable approach to social media marketing.

Belk’s (Journal of Consumer Research, 15(2), 139–168, 1988, Journal of Consumer Research, 40(1), 477–500, 2013) seminal work on possessions and the extended self explains how possessions form and symbolize an individual’s extended self. According to the framework, material possessions play a significant role for the extended self. In recent decades, individuals in consumer societies of the Global North have started to question their consumption patterns and their impact on the natural environment in light of the climate crisis. These individuals engage in anti-consumption practices which aim at reducing environmental impact through reducing and rejecting consumption including the acquisition of material possessions. This paper assesses if Belk’s (Journal of Consumer Research, 15(2), 139–168, 1988, Journal of Consumer Research, 40(1), 477–500 2013) framework is still applicable in the case of sustainability-concerned anti-consumers and which modifications need to be made to account for a change in consumption patterns. We propose that the self-expressive aspect of the extended self framework remains salient, as the intentional non-consumption by anti-consumers helps them distance themselves from possible undesired selves. Through a de-extension of the self, consumers rely on experiences, people and places which are central to the self rather than on material possessions. The material objects that remain parts of the extended self and that have a symbolic meaning represent their owner’s ethical and pro-environmental values and are often created through upcycling, refurbishing or acquired in second-hand or sharing markets. Since consumers increasingly consider the effects their acquisitions and actions have on the state of the Earth, they re-extend their selves to include experiences and the natural environment as a psychological possession.

Marketers need to understand consumers in both theory and practice to create offerings that are valuable to them. Hence, the marketing discipline has conceptualized consumers’ subjectively perceived value in various ways, using multiple paradigms. Nevertheless, its constituents remain unclear. We argue that this is because the ontological and epistemological premises are both vague and narrow. Consequently, consumers’ value perceptions are still difficult to study or manage. With the aim of making a conceptual leap, our paper is the first to apply a critical realist (CR) approach to the phenomenon. CR’s stratified ontology and subjectivist/pluralist epistemology reconcile the positivist and interpretivist/constructionist paradigms, allowing the simultaneous existence of external socio-natural and internal subjective realities. Using these premises, we examine, from a marketer’s perspective, how consumers perceive value, which is a subjective, phenomenological, and socially constructed act embedded in the natural world. Our CR theorizing deploys Bhaskar’s (2010) RRREIC schema and includes a review of the extant subjective value conceptualizations (consumer perceived value, value-in-use, value-in-experience) and retroduction of the key mechanisms generating the phenomenon: meaning-making and sensory perception. Finally, we propose a novel conceptualization for Emergent Consumer Perceived Value formation (ECPV) as an open system. As its integral component, we introduce the concept of Sensory Value Affordance, explaining how consumers transform physical properties into subjective meanings. These conceptual tools cater especially to B2C managers and account for both the phenomenological and sociocultural as well as the corporeal and perceptual. Finally, we present broader implications for value research, the field of marketing, and society.

w papers is often more nuanced and demanding. These papers present new theoretical perspectives, integrate existing theories, introduce novel procedures or techniques, or provide well-reasoned critiques of previously published work. Conceptual papers do not materialize spontaneously, rather, they require careful effort and thoughtful reflection. Writing such papers necessitates a deep familiarity with a broad range of literature that provides a fertile ground for ideas to emerge and develop. During this reflective process, new ideas may be reformulated, reconnected, and recontextualized from older ones. The process can lead to the revitalization or evolution of existing theories, the discovery of novel conceptual insights, and the development of new theories. Occasionally, new ideas may "stand in the light by themselves, only faintly connected to the old ideas" (Salomone, 1993, p. 74). Regardless of the type of theoretical outcome, conceptual papers can push marketing researchers to consider novel ways of thinking about the phenomena they investigate that can propel new understandings. All scholarly papers should provide evidence to support their conceptual assertions, though the nature of this evidence varies (Vargo & Koskela-Houtari, 2020). Hence, the primary purpose of conceptual papers is to advance theory development rather than report empirical testing. Such papers seek to bridge existing theories in novel ways, link work across disciplines, offer multi-level insights and broaden the scope of our thinking (Goldberg, 2015, p. 128). Writing a conceptual paper requires insight and careful reading of existing literature inside and often outside the Bård Tronvoll

Strategies of incumbent firms have received considerable attention in marketing and across business disciplines, but findings regarding performance (dis)advantages and innovativeness are mixed. Prior studies on supply-side sources (factors internal to the firm) of incumbent inertia disadvantages are more prevalent than those on demand-side factors, which relate to a firm’s customers and may explain potential incumbent advantages. We introduce an integrated demand-side framework to incumbent inertia, recognizing how the supply- and demand-side factors interrelate through learning mechanisms. On the one hand, incumbent firms learn and develop various routines and assets that influence their product strategies, typically reflecting inertia and incremental innovation. At the same time, customers learn about products in the market, forming preferences that reflect switching costs and network externalities (demand-side factors). Although an incumbent can gain advantages from demand-side effects, this could accelerate the onset of supply-side disadvantages. We present a set of research propositions that specify critical effects, and examine implications for incumbent strategies.

Tom's story: In the second year of my doctoral program, while working on a model for my dissertation, I started writing up some thoughts on how several of the constructs I was studying might fit together. I guess I just didn't know any better, as I submitted this to a special issue of a journal that focused on my area of interest. A year later, my soloauthored conceptual article came out in press, and to this day, nearly 30 years later, still reliably gets 25 citations each year (see Gruen, 1995) . While the model in that article did not end up being the final model used in my dissertation, it provided the foundational elements, and it let me know I was on the right track. It also helped me land my first faculty position. Once my dissertation was completed, it was on to publishing the revised conceptual model along with the empirical findings. I had plenty of encouragement and help from my dissertation committee, and we were successful in getting the empirical article published. But publishing the conceptual model as a stand-alone article was not the focus, and I never did get back to publishing a conceptual article from my dissertation. While it was not my experience, I hear from doctoral students that they are often discouraged from writing and publishing conceptual articles, as their doctoral programs encourage the "safer" route of publishing empirical studies. They are often told to wait to publish conceptual articles until after tenure, when they have less pressure to publish. Supposedly conceptual article writing is more risky than empirical work, as the nature of the evidence is based on reasoning, logic, and connecting previous work, rather than having data generated specifically to support the proposed relationships. This advice is well intended, but good conceptual work is critical for two reasons. First, this is where the new ideas are going to be generated and disseminated. Second, empirical work needs to be grounded on solid conceptual models, so the theoretical implications of the findings become useful.