that has been likened to the âMississippi River in flood stageâ by founding editor Ronald. Frank (1995, 486). Motivated by dissatisfaction with what were ...
From the Editors-Elect: Meaningful Consumer Research We are honored, humbled, and excited to have been entrusted with the editorship of the Journal of Consumer Research ( JCR) as it enters its fifth decade of publication. Ushered into existence 40 years ago in June 1974, this journal was born in a time of intellectual ferment that has been likened to the “Mississippi River in flood stage” by founding editor Ronald Frank (1995, 486). Motivated by dissatisfaction with what were perceived as restrictive visions in other publication outlets and a shared conviction that there was a need to foster research that provided a deeper understanding of a fuller gamut of consumer behavior, the founders expressed bold ambitions. They sought to create a journal in which scholars interested in a spectrum of consumer behavior, construed in the broadest of terms, could be published. They intended that JCR should be “the first journal in which professionals sharing an interest in consumer behavior across disciplines send their material” (Frank 1974, i). And they believed that interdisciplinary research should be promoted. While the notion that the journal should publish impactful papers was largely implicit at the time of the founding, fostering high-impact research has become an explicit, complementary goal in the intervening years. Thus, the mandate we inherit is tripartite: publish work on the broad spectrum of consumer behavior, publish work that contributes to conversations across a range of disciplines, and publish research that is impactful. We see the illustrious line of editors who have preceded us over the last 40 years as having pursued this mandate cleverly and creatively, and we aim to do likewise. We want to thank in particular the most recent team of editors—Mary Frances Luce, Ann McGill, and Laura Peracchio—for their passionate commitment to the journal’s grounding principles and to ensuring, as they promised in their inaugural editorial (McGill, Peracchio, and Luce 2011), that JCR maintains extremely high standards, while facilitating many different routes to achieving them. At the same time, we want to acknowledge (as have virtually all our predecessors) that attainment of this journal’s tripartite mandate remains as much an ambition as an accomplishment. Despite an increasing breadth in the range of consumer behaviors that are explored in the pages of JCR, despite the fact that some exemplary interdisciplinary papers have been published, and despite the fact that (at least by some metrics) the influence of the journal is enviable in comparison with other business journals, there is more to be done. Recognizing that the journal is performing well but that it can never rest on the laurels it has accumulated, we have tried to unify our vision for advancing the journal with a single mantra: “make it meaningful.” This, of course, begs the question: What does “make it meaningful” mean? In our view, it means encouraging the submission and fostering the publication of papers that are meaningful in the sense articulated by Wells (1993). He argued, in essence, that any given piece of research should be designed from the start with a consideration of how it will be useful to the audiences it seeks to address. Audiences may, of course, be scholars within JCR’s founding fields. But they may also include scholars in other fields, public policy makers, marketing managers, environmental activists, or aspiring entrepreneurs. We encourage authors to “make it meaningful” by being specific about the relevance of their work to particular audiences, including but not limited to fellow academics. We firmly believe that papers originating in any subfield of consumer research can be meaningful to audiences within and beyond academe. A quick glance at the most cited and most accessed papers in JCR makes it obvious that high-impact papers can emanate from iii
any of our subfields: notably, psychology (e.g., Alba and Hutchinson 1987), cultural studies (e.g., Belk 1988), empirical and analytical modeling (e.g., Hauser and Wernerfelt 1990; Winer 1986), behavioral decision making (e.g., Simonson 1989), and methods (Zhao, Lynch, and Chen 2010) are all featured among the set of papers that have engaged the largest audiences. We therefore believe that our best hope for ensuring we publish meaningful research lies in encouraging a broad spectrum of researchers to submit papers about consumers or consumption, broadly defined. We believe that there is no single formula or paradigm for producing meaningful consumer research, and we therefore encourage a wide variety of approaches across papers. We note that among the papers that have tended to be highly cited and accessed, there is a disproportionate number that are conceptual; we thus particularly encourage submissions of this kind. Likewise, we believe that methodological papers have the potential to be of value to a wide readership, and we encourage the submission of high-quality methods papers to JCR as well. Finally, in keeping with the founding principles of the journal, and in the hope that interdisciplinary papers have the potential to be particularly meaningful, we continue to encourage the submission of work of this kind to the journal. Readers might well ask at this point, “What kind of papers on the topic of consumers or consumption would you discourage?” Our answer to this is papers that are mere attempts to boost a publication record, without regard for how much the contribution advances the conversation it attempts to join. We also want to make the review process meaningful for those who participate both as authors and as reviewers. To this end, we will try to send unambiguous signals when we convey our decisions. We will work closely with our team of Associate Editors to ensure consistency in the quality of the review process, an awareness that different research approaches require different reviewing criteria, and sensitivity to the fact that work with the potential to be meaningful to a range of audiences might break the mold and require a different perspective in the review process. When possible, we will offer feedback not only to authors but also to reviewers, so that all parties benefit from the review process. We realize that a slogan such as “make it meaningful” is nothing but empty rhetoric unless we put in place practices that support it. To illustrate how we intend to proceed, we have created an online appendix to this editorial (http://ejcr.org/appendix.html) that outlines some of the more specific details of our processes and procedures. We want to end by reinforcing one key point: we know we are custodians of a journal that has been well run and that has achieved much over the last 40 years. As we usher JCR into its fifth decade, eager to see it make even further strides, we will also be cognizant of the need to honor the heritage of the journal. We will endeavor to ensure that any changes we implement reinforce and build on the significant strengths JCR’s founders and its many stewards have already built. Darren Dahl Eileen Fischer Gita Johar Vicki Morwitz
REFERENCES Alba, Joseph W., and J. Wesley Hutchinson (1987), “Dimensions of Consumer Expertise,” Journal of Consumer Research, 13 (4), 411–54. Belk, Russell W. (1988), “Possessions and the Extended Self,” Journal of Consumer Research, 15 (2), 139–68. Frank, Ronald E. (1974), “The Journal of Consumer Research: An Introduction,” Journal of Consumer Research, 1 (1), i–vi. ——— (1995), “Notes on the Journal of Consumer Research: The Unexpected Challenges of a Start-Up,” in Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 22, ed. Frank R. Kardes and Mita Sujan, Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, 486–87. Hauser, John R., and Birger Wernerfelt (1990), “An Evaluation Cost Model of Consideration Sets,” Journal of Consumer Research, 16 (4), 393–408. iv
McGill, Ann, Laura Peracchio, and Mary Frances Luce (2011), “Solidarity of Purpose: Building an Understanding of Consumers through a Community of Scholars,” Journal of Consumer Research, 38 (1), ii–viii. Simonson, Itamar (1989), “Choice Based on Reasons: The Case of Attraction and Compromise Effects,” Journal of Consumer Research, 16 (2), 158–74. Wells, William D. (1993), “Discovery-Oriented Consumer Research,” Journal of Consumer Research, 19 (4), 489– 504. Winer, Russell S. (1986), “A Reference Price Model of Brand Choice for Frequently Purchased Products,” Journal of Consumer Research, 13 (2), 250–56. Zhao, Xinshu, John G. Lynch Jr., and Qimei Chen (2010), “Reconsidering Baron and Kenny: Myths and Truths about Mediation Analysis,” Journal of Consumer Research, 37 (2), 197–206.
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