Monday 13 July 2015

The Journal of Marketing Research


The Journal of Marketing Research has now reached almost four decades of growth since its initiation in 1964. It continues to be a rich source of innovative ideas in research methodology and knowledge diffusion for both practitioners and academics. This article pays tribute to the many scholars who have contributed to the Journal of Marketing Research's success and continued service to marketing researchers worldwide. The authors describe the early years of the Journal of Marketing Research and illustrate how it has become the premier journal in marketing research methodology. In so doing, they discuss its important role in the dissemination of knowledge through the Advanced Research Techniques Forum and other special interest marketing groups. The authors also stress the significant role of software development in the implementation of the increasingly complex computations associated with advanced marketing research methods.Research practitioners and academics are interested in learning about newer methods and when and when not to use them. In short, most are interested in knowledge development and transfer and the replications of these developments for management practice.Marketing researchers' use of cluster analysis and MDS owes much to the techniques of these early developers. Bell Laboratories graciously distributed its extensive suite of mainframe computer programs, including the FORTRAN source code, free of charge to interested takers. Many of Bell Labs' early algorithms wound up in the assorted software packages of marketing research organizations. Bell Labs' programs were eagerly applied by marketing research firms and contributed markedly to the strides made in analyzing consumers' perceptions, preferences, attitudes, and choices.Richard Johnson, then at Market Facts, independently proposed a two-factor-at-a-time trade-off approach. Both Green and Rao and Johnson published articles on their methodology. Myers, Massy, and Greyser (1980) cite this case as an example of how research ideas can permeate the marketplace, through publications and/or successful applications. Figure 1 (taken from Myers, Massy, and Greyser) illustrates the process. Discrete choice modeling has  extended the breadth and value of conjoint analysis well beyond its initial roots.Now, with the advent of hierarchical Bayesian methods,analysts can estimate part-worth sat the individual level.This major event(and other techno developments,including mixture models and latent class modeling) has extended the marketing researcher’s domain to include increasingly powerful statistical methods.Many highly trained researchers,including(alphabetically)Greg Allenby,Eric Bradlow,Wayne DeSarbo,Wagner Kamakura,Abba Krieger, Peter Lenk, Jordan Louviere, Peter Rossi, and Michel Wedel, have contributed to the major innovation that hierarchical Bayes and related techniques have brought to the analyst's table. These developments are excellent examples of how statisticians and marketing researchers working together,can develop useful and important techniquesfor choice modeling, multiple regression, and other multivariate tools of interest to marketers.
The foregoing(andbrief)summary of technical developments hardly does justice to the strides made in marketing research methodology over the past four decades.However, what has been seen is a dramatic and sustained reaching out to other disciplines (e.g., microeconomics,OR/MS, statis- tics,psychometrics)for new tools and techniques that can be adapted to. marketing problems.Conversely,marketing practitioners have provided feedback to the technique developers on how the initial methods could (or should)be modified to provide even more useful tools for applications-oriented researchers.
M.V.Krishna Karthik
1311472



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