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2014 IJRM Best Article Award

The European Marketing Academy (EMAC) and the International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM) are pleased to announce the winners of the 2014 IJRM Best Paper Award:

From academic research to marketing practice: Exploring the marketing science value chain. John H. Roberts, Ujwal Kayande, Stefan Stremersch. International Journal of Research in Marketing, Volume 31(2), 127-140.

and

Choosing a digital content strategy: How much should be free? Daniel Halbheer, Florian Stahl, Oded Koenigsberg, Donald R. Lehmann. International Journal of Research in Marketing, Volume 31(2), 192-206.

Abstracts:

Roberts et al:

We aim to investigate the impact of marketing science articles and tools on the practice of marketing. This impact may be direct (e.g., an academic article may be adapted to solve a practical problem) or indirect (e.g., its contents may be incorporated into practitioners’ tools, which then influence marketing decision making). We use the term “marketing science value chain” to describe these diffusion steps, and survey marketing managers, marketing science intermediaries (practicing marketing analysts), and marketing academics to calibrate the value chain.

In our sample, we find that (1) the impact of marketing science is perceived to be largest on decisions such as the management of brands, pricing, new products, product portfolios, and customer/market selection, and (2) tools such as segmentation, survey-based choice models, marketing mix models, and pre-test market models have the largest impact on marketing decisions. Exemplary papers from 1982 to 2003 that achieved dual – academic and practice – impact are Guadagni and Little (1983) and Green and Srinivasan (1990). Overall, our results are encouraging. First, we find that the impact of marketing science has been largest on marketing decision areas that are important to practice. Second, we find moderate alignment between academic impact and practice impact. Third, we identify antecedents of practice impact among dual impact marketing science papers. Fourth, we discover more recent trends and initiatives in the period 2004–2012, such as the increased importance of big data and the rise of digital and mobile communication, using the marketing science value chain as an organizing framework.

Halbheer et al:

Advertising supported content sampling is ubiquitous in online markets for digital information goods. Yet, little is known about the profit impact of sampling when it serves the dual purpose of disclosing content quality and generating advertising revenue. This paper proposes an analytical framework to study the optimal content strategy for online publishers and shows how it is determined by characteristics of both the content market and the advertising market. The strategy choice is among a paid content strategy, a sampling strategy, and a free content strategy, which follow from the publisher’s decisions concerning the size of the sample and the price of the paid content. We show that a key driver of the strategy choice is how sampling affects the prior expectations of consumers, who learn about content quality from the inspection of the free samples. Surprisingly, we find that it can be optimal for the publisher to generate advertising revenue by offering free samples even when sampling reduces both prior quality expectations and content demand. In addition, we show that it can be optimal for the publisher to refrain from revealing quality through free samples when advertising effectiveness is low and content quality is high. To illustrate, we relate our framework to the newspaper industry, where the sampling strategy is known as the “metered model.”

Selection process:

The winning article was chosen from two rounds of voting open to all the members of the IJRM Editorial Board only. In the first round, each voter could nominate up to three (3) papers that were published in IJRM in 2014. Four (4) papers received the most nominations and they composed the shortlist. In the second/final round, the Board Members voted for one paper from the shortlist. The winning paper is the one with the most votes. This year, two papers tied for the most votes received.

Four Finalists:

• A simple method for estimating preference parameters for individuals. Bart D. Frischknecht, Christine Eckert, John Geweke, Jordan J. Louviere. Volume 31(1), Pages 35-48.
• From academic research to marketing practice: Exploring the marketing science value chain. John H. Roberts, Ujwal Kayande, Stefan Stremersch. Volume 31(2), Pages 127-140.
• Choosing a digital content strategy: How much should be free? Daniel Halbheer, Florian Stahl, Oded Koenigsberg, Donald R. Lehmann. Volume 31(2), Pages 192-206.
• Gains and losses of exclusivity in grocery retailing, Katrijn Gielens, Els Gijsbrechts, Marnik G. Dekimpe. Volume 31(3), Pages 239-252.

 

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