Journal of Consumer Research, Inc.

From the Editors-Elect: Meaningful Consumer Research

Author(s): Darren Dahl, Eileen Fischer, Gita Johar, and Vicki Morwitz
Source: Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 41, No. 1 (June 2014), pp. iii-v
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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iii
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 fth 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 ood 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 rst journal in which professionals sharing an interest
in consumer behavior across disciplines send their material (Frank 1974, i). And they be-
lieved 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 editorsMary Frances Luce, Ann McGill, and Laura
Peracchiofor their passionate commitment to the journals 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 journals tripartite mandate remains as much an ambition as an accom-
plishment. 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 inuence 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 mean-
ingful 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 JCRs founding elds. But they may also include scholars in other elds, public policy
makers, marketing managers, environmental activists, or aspiring entrepreneurs. We en-
courage authors to make it meaningful by being specic about the relevance of their work
to particular audiences, including but not limited to fellow academics.
We rmly believe that papers originating in any subeld 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
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iv
any of our subelds: 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 con-
sumption, broadly dened. 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 partic-
ularly 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 partic-
ularly 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 ap-
proaches 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 benet 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 specic 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 fth 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 signicant strengths JCRs founders and its many stewards have already
built.
Darren Dahl
Eileen Fischer
Gita Johar
Vicki Morwitz
REFERENCES
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Hauser, John R., and Birger Wernerfelt (1990), An Evaluation Cost Model of Consideration Sets, Journal of
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
v
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