Reality Check: Infusing Ecological Value into Academic Marketing Research

Abstract

1 This value need not be appreciated immediately by the stakeholder or its value evident in the short run. Science and its dissemination may take time to reach and clarify the benefits to such stakeholders. 2 Proximity to the real world is not a new aspiration. Indeed, there is a long history in the social sciences. In the Brunswik lens model, a cue's "ecological validity" is correlated with some important perceptual criterion in the environment (Brunswik 1956). While important, we are less interested in this strict view of validity, which has been relegated mostly to measurement and design. 3 There is an important distinction between research that generalizes across the population of interest and research that generalizes to the population of interest. Lynch (1982) argues that no research in the social sciences can claim to be universally generalizable. Instead, research should content itself with generalizing across subpopulations, where subpopulations are based on background variables that may interact with key independent variables to affect the behavior of interest, also known as heterogeneous treatment effects (Chen et al. 2020).

Conducting Research in Marketing with Quasi-Experiments

“…The aim is not to show one specification (or model) and defend it. Instead, the idea is to show that the sign, significance, and magnitude of the estimate of β remain broadly consistent across a vast range of possible models (Van Heerde et al 2021). Often these robustness checks are dropped from the published version of the article, though they are very useful in the referee process and can end up as part of an online appendix.…”

“…For example, the January 2021 special issue of the Journal of Marketing was dedicated to finding important marketing research questions, as highlighted in the editorial (Deighton, Mela, and Moorman 2021). Other editorials that discuss ways to identify important research questions are Van Heerde et al (2021) and Chandy et al (2021) Data Question: How Can Researchers Find Data with Quasi-Experimental Variation in x? Angrist and Pischke (2009, p. 7) explain that an identification strategy "describe[s] the manner in which a researcher uses observational data or data that is not generated as part of an intentional experiment, to approximate a real experiment."…”

Research Pathways for Societal Impact: A Typology of Relational Engagements for Consumer Psychology Research

“…TCR originated with a core commitment to disseminate its research findings to key stakeholders making it aligned with a relational engagement approach (Mick, Pettigrew, Pechmann, & Ozanne, 2012). Like the recent call for doing research with more ecological validity (van Heerde, Moorman, Moreau, & Palmatier, 2021), the problems and perspectives of consumers and their caregivers are central and infuse the entire TCR research process.…”

R2M Index 1.0: Assessing the Practical Relevance of Academic Marketing Articles

“…Given that marketing is an applied discipline, articles published in academic journals should fulfill marketing practitioners’ informational needs and be relevant to marketing practice. However, many articles do not seem to present relevant and important insights and findings that impact business practice (Jaworski 2011; Kohli and Haenlein 2021; Kumar 2017; Stremersch, Winer, and Camacho 2021; Van Heerde et al 2021). Prominent marketing scholars, including the founders of the annual Theory and Practice in Marketing (TPM) conference, have noted that “many observers complain that academia is far removed from addressing substantive problems of industry.…”

“…For example, they have proposed providing incentives and rewards for scholars to engage in relevant research, focusing less on technical sophistication and more on substantive issues, and improving communications and interactions between academics and practitioners (Kohli and Haenlein 2021; Lehmann, McAlister, and Staelin 2011; Lilien 2011; Reibstein, Day, and Wind 2009; Schmitt 2012; Winer 1999). The editors of the Journal of Marketing ( JM ) recently highlighted specific actions to help infuse real-world perspectives into academic research (Van Heerde et al 2021). Scholars have also discussed how business schools can improve the practical importance of faculty research (Stremersch, Winer, and Camacho 2021).…”