Perceptual Differences of Marketing Journals: A Worldwide Perspective

The practice of evaluating faculty and business schools based on their journal publications has increased the emphasis on research output in peer reviewed journals. Since journal standings are a frequently debated issue, this study seeks to examine the perceptual differences of journals between different segments of marketing academics. Based on a worldwide online survey, journals are assessed in terms of four subjective quality metrics: journal familiarity, average rank position, percent of respondents who classify a journal as top tier, and readership. It is demonstrated that an individual's geographic origin, research interests or journal affiliation can have a significant impact on journal rankings.     

Key institutions in business and management education research

The authors investigate institutional productivity in business and management education (BME) research based on the analysis of 4,464 articles published by 7,210 authors across 17 BME journals over a 10-year period, involving approximately 1,900 schools worldwide. Departing from traditional disciplinary silos, they examine the BME research field as a whole by including all traditional business disciplinary areas and producing two top 100 rankings, one based on raw number of author publications and the other based on weighted scores reflecting journal quality and coauthorship.     

Revisiting the standing of international business journals in the competitive landscape

Journal rankings are contentious, proliferating and bring about a significant change to research productivity and quality assessment. In this paper, we assess the quality and impact of International Business (IB) journals in relation to each other and management and business journals more broadly. In so doing, we overcome methodological limitations of previous journal rankings by adopting a novel approach that incorporates a worldwide meta-ranking. Its key advantage is the ability to look at the standing of journals both within and between subject-areas. Comparisons between subject areas are important because centralization of resource allocation decisions within institutions has ramifications for disciplines and staff involved. Results indicate that within the IB domain, JIBS continues to top the list, JWB has solidified its position and joined the upper tier of IB journals, the space below JIBS and JWB is increasingly contested, pointing to the emergence of a multi-tier set of “core” IB journals. In the wider competitive landscape of management and business journals, IB journals perform well in the upper tier, but there is a long tail of IB journals at the lower end of our meta-ranking.     

Evaluating Journal Quality: Beyond “Expert” Journal Assessments in the IS Discipline

Assessing the relative stature of journals devoted to the information systems (IS) discipline is an important issue for IS scholars and those who evaluate them. Even though journal assessment results are often dubiously applied by those making hiring, promotion, and merit decisions, the fact that they are so often a major ingredient in these decisions demands that we understand underlying journal assessment processes. Beyond processes involving the opinions of various “experts,” we here examine how IS journals can be evaluated based on overt behaviors of crowds of IS scholars. These behaviors are revealed preferences, in contrast to stated preferences found in opinions. Two classes of objective journal assessments are studied: impact measures and power measures. Among the former, we find that so-called journal impact factors are problematic, rendering their meaningfulness in evaluating journal stature highly suspect. Another kind of impact measure, the H-index, is found to be a more straightforward way to gauge journal impact. Two power measures for assessing IS journal stature are examined: publishing intensity and publishing breadth. The stature of IS journals according to each of the impact measures and power measures is determined. A comparison of the results shows that a small group of four or five IS journals are repeatedly found at the top across multiple objective assessment approaches. To account for both the consumption and production of IS research, it is suggested that a combined use of impact and power measures be employed in exercises aimed at evaluating relative statures of journals devoted to IS research.     

Language influence in responses to questionnaires by bilingual respondents: A test of the Whorfian hypothesis

This paper examines how sub-cultural respondents differ in their perceptions and answers to questionnaire items tapping their acculturation and ethnic identity. A related objective is to examine how bilingual respondents exposed to an instrument in the source language perceive it compared to subjects exposed to the instrument in their native language. Prior studies find that respondents can answer differently according to the language of the questionnaire. The framework is based on the Whorfian hypothesis and the Revised Hierarchical Model. About 500 questionnaires are collected from Greek-Canadians residing in Eastern Canada. Findings indicate the presence of several non-invariant factor loadings and covariances, indicating that caution should be exercised when carrying out ethnic identity studies with respondents who are given the choice of the language of the questionnaire. Research on how differences between languages affect consumer information processing and cognitions can shed light on a new form of response style in cross-cultural research.     

Critical Management Studies and Business Ethics: A Synthesis and Three Research Trajectories for the Coming Decade

We present the findings of a worldwide survey that was administered to business ethic scholars to better understand journal quality within the business ethics academic community. Based upon the data from the survey, we provide a ranking of the top 10 business ethics journals. We then provide a comparison of business ethics journals to other mainstream management journals in terms of journal quality. The results of the study suggest that, within the business ethics academic community, many scholars prefer to publish in the top business ethics academic journals over other mainstream management journals. Furthermore, the results of the study suggest that within the business ethics academic field there are two dominant academic communities: one in Europe and one in North America. Each of these academic communities has its own preferred publication outlets, suggesting a potentially problematic bifurcation of business ethics scholarship.     

An analysis of the Journal of Consumer Studies and Home Economics 1977–93

Any field of study worthy of academic consideration and development needs a research base to support it. Many research practitioners working within the consumer studies and home economics areas have expressed fears about not only the lack of development of a research base but also the communication network within the research community. This study analyses one of the main research journals that is used by this research community, the Journal of Consumer Studies and Home Economics, and examines its contribution. By analysing its development over the first 17 years of its existence, it has been shown that there is an international research community which is beginning to communicate with itself. However, these research practitioners still seem to rely more on research material from outside their own professional area rather than from work published in their own research journals. A lack of an indexing service covering the consumer studies and home economics areas continues to hamper dissemination of research material to a wider academic audience.     

How to derive consensus among various marketing journal rankings?

Despite the increasing popularity of journal rankings to evaluate the quality of research contributions, the individual rankings for journals that ranked below the top tier of publications usually feature only modest agreement. Attempts to merge rankings into meta-rankings suffer from some methodological issues, such as mixed measurement scales and incomplete data. This paper addresses the issue of how to construct suitable aggregates of individual journal rankings, using an optimization-based consensus ranking approach. The authors apply the proposed method to a subset of marketing-related journals from a list of collected journal rankings. Next, the paper studies the stability of the derived consensus solution, and the degeneration effects that occur when excluding journals and/or rankings. Finally, the authors investigate the similarities/dissimilarities of the consensus with a naive meta-ranking and with individual rankings. The results show that, even though journals are not uniformly ranked, one may derive a consensus ranking with considerably high agreement with the individual rankings.     

A new methodology for aggregating tables: Summarizing journal quality data

Often successive studies are conducted to rank items across time or across different raters. For instance, different consumers may be asked to rank products, or banks may be ranked at different points of time based on their lending practices. In such cases, a simple model would suggest arriving at a summary set of rankings by averaging across the sets. However, when the rank of an item is missing in some of the sets, a simple mean can produce a biased result. This is because the absence of an item in a particular set may be important information that is being ignored.MacMillan conducted a series of studies to identify a forum for publishing business policy research, the most recent of which appeared in this journal. The design of the study involved two stages of selection: first, the journals were to be voted into a set, and second, they were to be ranked by a panel of scholars. This procedure resulted in some of the journals not appearing in every study. Thus, taking a simple average across the studies would result in misleading information, because the absence of a journal in a particular study is information that is important (because the panel chose not to vote it into consideration) but lost in averaging.One of the objectives of the MacMillan studies was to provide scholars with information about the importance of the journal as a publication outlet. Thus, it is important to be able to arrive at a summary set of rankings to provide cumulative information. To achieve this, a left-censored model was developed. Assuming that the ranks follow a normal distribution, with unknown mean and the same variance, maximum likelihood estimates of the means were calculated.. The summary set of ranks were then calculated using these estimates. The summary ranks were compared with those arrived at from an independent estimate of journal quality and found to have validity.Our model helps enhance the value of the MacMillan studies by providing cumulative information on the journals and facilitating their comparison with other studies. We see the applicability of the model in other areas too. Known by the generic term of league tables, such sets of data are generated in marketing research, educational studies, etc. Thus, the model is an important contribution to the tool kit of empirical research.     

Navigating the Complexities of Grounded Theory Research in Advertising

Grounded theory is a well-established methodology within the social sciences and more recently within the field of advertising. This article looks at how it has been used in advertising research and in particular two key areas: the consumption of advertising and the world of advertising creatives. The article concentrates on common mistakes found in grounded theory papers submitted for publication in leading journals. It offers 10 important points for consideration that should help authors improve the quality of their research by avoiding such errors. The article concludes by suggesting potential areas of advertising where grounded theory may be applied in future research.     

Trends in Advertising Research: A Longitudinal Analysis of Leading Advertising,Marketing, and Communication Journals, 1980 to 2010

This study provides a longitudinal content analysis of advertising research articles in 17 top-tier advertising, marketing, and communication journals published over the past 30 years (1980–2010, n = 926). The study's purpose is to shed light on the direction and progression of advertising as an academic field by updating and extending Yale and Gilly's (1988) study of advertising research trends. Nine content characteristics of the journal articles were examined: (1) theory presence (theory driven versus not theory driven), (2) names, types (theory versus theoretical framework/model versus construct), and originating disciplines of theory, (3) topic areas, (4) media of interest, (5) research approaches (empirical versus nonempirical and quantitative versus qualitative versus mixed), (6) methods, (7) types of effects, (8) units of analysis, and (9) research implications. Changes in the content characteristics of journal articles were found across the 30 years analyzed in five-year intervals. Implications for the field, scholars, and advertising practitioners are discussed.     

Marketing in the UK and US Not-for-Profit Sector: The Import Mirror View

This article explores the US and UK literature on not-for-profit (NFP) marketing. The emphasis is on journal articles that have appeared in the area. The purpose of the review is to discover if their are any lessons that can be learnt from the US situation in order to gain a greater understanding of the UK NFP marketing. This is in the tradition of the ‘import mirror’ view of comparative research. The environment within which NFP marketing takes place is discussed. This is followed by a review which looks at journal types, research areas, type and quality of research and issues arising from the application of NFP marketing in the US and UK The review reveals that there is considerably more literature on NFP marketing in the US. Popular subjects are segmentation and health care. The UK literature is still largely concerned with the appropriateness and applicability of marketing in the NFP sector: The lesson taking is that the UK should not go down the US path but rather a) develop suitable courses for NFP managers and b) explore the use of the newer service concepts of relationship, service quality and internal marketing.     

A Typology for Evaluating Branch-Level Perceptions of Internal Customer Management Processes within the UK Clearing Banks

Since the late 1980, the UK Clearing Banks have faced growing criticism over the quality of their finanical services. Advantages may exist in using internal marketing to ensure closer integration of multiple functions across all departments. Although adoption of an internal marketing philosophy may improve the quality of services delivered to both internal and external customers, it appears that there are few paradigms available which can be used by bankers seeking to introduce the concept into their organisation. By applying a quasi-ethnographic approach, a qualitative internal customer management model was developed based on the Peters and Waterman 7s framework to describe the factors influencing internal customer relationship which exist between branches and other departments within a bank. To determine if the model could be used to evaluate branch-level perceptions of internal customer management practices, a survey was undertaken using a modifed version of the Parasuraman SERVQUAL model. The responses suggest that possible actions to establish a stronger internal customer orientation may include altering prevailing management styles, restructuring, redirecting operational strategies away from excessive emphasis on technical efficiency and improving understanding of internal customer needs. Although the study indicates that the SERVQUAL tool can be used to examine internal customer service processes within the financial services sector, there is still only anecdotal evidence that stronger internal customer chains will enhance organisational performance. Further research is needed to validate claims that there are favourable cost/benefit outcomes to be exploited by strengthing internal customer management practices. For bankers who are convinced that changing internal organisational processes may enhance the quality of services delivered to external customers, then a process flow model is presented of a possible approach for evaluating and implementing changes necessary to create a stronger internal customer orientation within their organisation.     

Managerial bias in anticipated images of competing shopping areas

Several dimensions of consumer retail patronage decisions that affect the firm's marketing program are investigated. In particular, the focus of the research extends previous research in the area to investigate the images held by consumers of shopping malls rather than individual stores. Second, the ability of store managers to accurately predict the image held by consumers both of their own shopping area and of a competitor's shopping area is investigated. This is designed to evaluate the ability of managers to predict consumer perceptions irrespective of their own beliefs. Finally, differences in the perceptions of two potential market segments are compared. Manager ability to differentiate between segments is noted. The implications for marketing programming decisions and the contribution the research makes to the body of literature on image measurement are discussed.     

The effects of scent on consumer behaviour

This article presents a systematic review of extant research on the effects of scent on consumer behaviour for readers of the International Journal of Consumer Studies. Although many articles have been published on this topic in recent years, there is a need for a comprehensive summary of up‐to‐date findings in this area of research. A systematic literature review is conducted with selected Chartered Association of Business Schools‐ranked journals in the fields of marketing and psychology, covering the period between 1980 and 2015. Thematic areas include the impact of scent on consumers’ cognitive and affective responses, attitudes and perceptions, as well as memory and behaviours. Relevant mediators and moderators of the effects of scent on these variables include affect, cognition, awareness and individual or environmental stimuli. Gaps for future research are identified and include the role of consumer awareness of scent and its influence on behaviour. Although this article provides a systematic review of the literature within the fields of psychology and marketing, it acknowledges that a large body of research regarding human responses to odours exists within other disciplinary fields such as neuroscience. The potential for, as well as the ethical caveats of, using scent stimuli for marketing purposes are also considered. This article makes a significant contribution to the consumer behaviour literature given its systematic article selection and review process, encompassing the most up‐to‐date research and focusing on all key thematic areas related to scent and consumption.     

The Ethiopian Immigrant Business Enclave in the United States: Perceptions of Residents,Consumers, and Entrepreneurs

This study investigates the Ethiopian immigrant urban business enclave and its infrastructure, aesthetics, and quality of life. These immigrants are revitalizing urban areas, and examining the perceptual differences among stakeholders in these neighborhoods is salient. Economic development literature suggests that stakeholders share a common vision in order for revitalization efforts to be successful. Surveys were administered in an urban area to statistically test hypotheses that stakeholder groups have different perceptions. The analysis of variance technique (ANOVA) was used to analyze the data. Results indicate that stakeholders differ in their perceptions of the business climate and quality of life.     

Building brand relationships online: A comparison of two interactive applications

Due to its potential for interactive communication, the Internet is considered a promising tool for relationship marketing. However, the effects of interactive communication on marketing effectiveness may depend on several factors related to each individual consumer, such as Internet experience. In this study, two of the most common applications for interactive communication—personalized Web sites and customer communities—were compared for their ability to develop consumer-brand relationships as measured by the Brand Relationship Quality (BRQ) framework of Fournier (1998). No main effects of the applications were observed. However, significant effects of Internet applications were found when Internet experience was included as a moderating variable. Specifically, it was found that personalized Web sites developed stronger consumer-brand relationships for respondents with extensive Internet experience than for respondents with limited Internet experience. Conversely, it was found that customer communities developed stronger relationships among respondents with limited Internet experience than among respondents with extensive Internet experience. Implications for marketing management and future research in this area are discussed.     

Ethical Attitudes in Small Businesses and Large Corporations: Theory and Empirical Findings from a Tracking Study Spanning Three Decades

This study offers a theoretical framework of ethical behavior and a comparative analysis of ethical perceptions of managers of large, mostly publicly traded corporations (those with 1,000 or more employees) and the owners and managers of smaller companies (those with fewer than 100 employees) across 17 years. The primary research provides basic data on the changing standards of ethics as perceived by leaders of large and small businesses where the cultures frequently fall into sharp contrast. Our findings reveal the extent to which the message of business integrity is gaining or losing ground within large and small companies. It does this by means of respondents’ judgments of acceptable responses to 16 scenarios profiling common business situations with questionable ethical dimensions. Based on responses from over 5,000 managers and employees (from firms of all sizes) to our scenarios at three points in time (1985, 1993, 2001), we tested two research questions. First, for firms of all sizes, have business ethics improved or declined between the years 1985 and 2001? Second, comparing responses of large and small firm executives across the 1985–2001 time frame, is there a discernible difference in their ethical standards? Our results suggest that business leaders are making somewhat more ethical decisions in recent years. We also found that small business owner–managers offered less ethical responses to scenarios in 1993 but that no significant differences existed with large firm managers in 1985 and 2001. Implications of our findings are discussed.     

PROLIFERATION OF ACADEMIC JOURNALS: EFFECTS ON RESEARCH QUANTITY AND QUALITY

There have been significant structural changes in research markets in recent years reflected in the increase in the number of academic journals. This paper uses a differential game model of authors and journal editors to examine the effects of an increase in competition among academic journals. Does an increase in the number of academic journals lead to an increase in scholarly articles published? Will an increase in publishing outlets adversely affect research quality? The results show greater competition does not affect research output and in fact enhances research quality. The number of journals and the relative discount rates of authors and editors are crucial determinants of the effects of competition.     

Key quality factors affecting users' perception of social networking websites

PurposeThe main aim of the present study is to evaluate the quality factors of websites and their effect on users' perceptions about quality in the context of social networking websites.Design/methodology/approachThis is an applied study conducted as a field survey. A conceptual framework of website quality is proposed and empirically tested that combines quality factors and users' overall perception about quality. Based upon conceptual frameworks in the areas of information systems and using responses from 300 users, a seven factors scale has been validated and data were used to test the conceptual model. To test validity of conceptual framework, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted and regression analysis was performed to examine the suggested hypotheses in the conceptual framework.FindingsIn this study, six different significant factors namely efficiency, entertainment, community drivenness, privacy, user friendliness, efficiency and navigability were identified to be significant for the service quality of social networking websites. Using the survey conducted in the statistical sample, only the factor of web appearance was identified as less important for social networking website users.Practical implicationsFindings from this research provide a set of essential and desired quality factors that social networking website developers can use to improve the quality of existing websites in turn increasing its numbers of users, thus bringing benefits to the company. Second, this study shows how perceived quality has a direct and profound effect on the degree of consumer perception about website quality.Originality/valueThis study, expanding a conceptual model, tries to identify the set of service quality factors for social networking websites. The information of these quality factors as a major predictor of consumers' quality perception provides social networking websites management an initial point for making successful quality management practices for their e-commerce.