Abstract
As we finish our remaining responsibilities as Journal of Public Policy & Marketing editors, we reflect on the changes during the last three years. We then look at the implications for JPP&M of an unprecedented pandemic and its confluence with diverse social justice issues. We close with our suggestions for publishing policy-relevant research.
Journal Goals and Accomplishments
As incoming editors, we created a leadership structure that was a first for JPP&M: three coeditors serving as equals. We had several primary goals for the journal during our tenure. One was to engage a broader group of scholars who were dedicated to marketing and public policy issues. We welcomed Kelly Martin, Rebecca Reczek, Maura Scott, Cliff Shultz, Lisa Bolton, Marlys Mason, Beth Vallen, and Melissa Bublitz as first-time JPP&M Associate Editors (AEs). We also greatly appreciate the outstanding AEs who agreed to continue their service to JPP&M when we came on board: Stacey Baker, Lauren Block, Janet Hoek, Jerome Williams, and Manoj Hastak. All of these AEs have done a marvelous job in providing roadmaps for improving manuscripts, and they exemplify our desire to embrace a “golden rule of reviewing”—work to treat authors in the manner you would like to be treated when you are the author. This certainly does not mean submissions are not rigorously vetted; instead, it indicates that authors submitting to JPP&M are treated with respect and an honest effort to provide constructive feedback with suggestions for improvement. This is a perspective also embraced by the vast majority of the talented members of the JPP&M editorial review board.
As editors, we have attempted to make decisions early in the review process, and there have been very few submissions that have been rejected after reaching the second round of revision. As authors, we understand how difficult late-round rejections can be, and it can be frustrating to engage in many rounds of revisions, even when the ultimate outcome may be positive. When the contribution is clear, minor issues should not hold up an acceptance decision that moves the paper forward into the literature.
Our team wanted to encourage research on critical issues related to marketing and society through special issues. We appreciate the outstanding efforts of our special issue editors who have attracted strong submissions and shepherded many important contributions to the literature for the following domains: Food and Well-Being (Scott and Vallen, eds.), Marketing and Public Policy in a Technology-Integrated Society (Walker, Milne, and Weinberg, eds), Consumer Power and Access (Fitzgerald, Bone, and Pappalardo, eds.), and Political Activity and Marketing (Vadakkepatt, Korschun, and Martin, eds.). In addition, we have worked with editors of special issues that will be published in the future: Analytics Insights for Public Policy and Marketing (Davis, Hamilton, and Grewal, eds.), Transformative Consumer Research (Scott and Mende, eds.), and Pharmaceuticals, Marketing, and Society (Sarkees, Fitzgerald, and Lamberton, eds.).
Our editorial team also wanted to enhance recognition and respect across various constituencies for the outstanding JPP&M scholarship within the academic community and among those more broadly involved in public policy and consumer well-being at global, national, and local levels. This included greater promotion through special sessions at Summer and Winter AMA Conferences and the Marketing and Public Policy Conference, as well as through AMA’s efforts to highlight many of the excellent JPP&M articles on some of the most important topics facing marketing and society today.
In terms of recognition, it was gratifying to see JPP&M articles receive the highest number of inaugural AMA-EBSCO Annual Awards for Responsible Research in Marketing for “outstanding research that produces both credible and useful knowledge that can be applied to benefit society” (Responsible Research in Business and Management 2020). AMA-EBSCO acknowledged five JPP&M articles, with the next highest marketing journal receiving three awards (Journal of Marketing Research). JPP&M also had the highest 2019–20 Altmetric scores (a weighted average of media attention received) among the four AMA journals. The Journal Citation Report impact factor increased each year during our editorship, more than doubling from its initial level. Given the goals and positioning of JPP&M to reach beyond academia, the impact factor will likely never be a crucial issue for the journal. However, it is still gratifying to see the journal’s increased recognition and the opportunities for future growth.
It has been an honor to lead the journal as it changed from a biannual to a quarterly publication. We thank Dave Stewart for establishing the parameters and negotiating with AMA and SAGE for the change to four issues per year, which began in January 2019. This was a change that was long overdue, and we feel that the transition will help enhance the journal’s opportunities for future editorial teams.
We hope that our efforts and those of prior editors have set a strong foundation for the outstanding new coeditor team of Kelly Martin and Maura Scott. The qualifications that this team bring to the journal are truly exceptional. They both served as AEs for JPP&M, in addition to other prominent journals, and they have a breadth of experience, exposure, and energy that will increase connections for enhanced interest in the journal. They have both served as special issue editors, exhibiting leadership qualities and creating great interest from authors in these issues. Professors Scott and Martin are known globally for their research and strong publication records in major journals in marketing and related disciplines. They each have a number of Journal of Public Policy & Marketing publications, have each received the Kinnear Award for the outstanding article in JPP&M, and have both received the Emerging Scholar Award from the AMA Marketing and Society SIG. Their willingness to shepherd the journal over the next term is tremendously exciting for the outgoing coeditor team.
Critical Issues Facing Society in the 2020s: The Need and Role for JPP&M
We believe there has never been a more important time for the journal and its mission to address the most pressing problems facing society at the intersection of marketing and public policy. Reflecting on Journal of Public Policy & Marketing’s establishment in 1982, founding editor Tom Kinnear (2001) said, “it was a time of great excitement for those of us interested in public policy issues in marketing.… Unfortunately, there was a limited amount of space available in the standard marketing journals, as public policy research competed with many other substantive topics.” Almost four decades later, we have seen substantial growth in interest among marketing scholars in addressing the many troubling issues that face society. This growth is evidenced by the journal’s transition from an annual to a quarterly publication, 30 years of the Marketing & Public Policy Conference, the establishment of the Transformative Consumer Research initiative, calls from other marketing journals for similar research, as well as the establishment of the AMA-EBSCO Annual Award for Responsible Research. Given its stature and position as the marketing journal that focuses exclusively on marketing’s role in addressing such issues, JPP&M is in a unique and prominent position to address the huge societal issues we face now, many of which have come into heightened focus during our editorship.
Never a More Important Time for Public Policy and Marketing Research
As we write this final editorial, we are in a worldwide pandemic with dramatic differences in successful suppression across countries and regions, and with the politicization of science playing a role. Recent events have heightened demand for equitable treatment and fair access for all people, regardless of race, gender and gender identity, income, etc. (and their intersection). Marketing scholars can contribute by examining the effects of institutional actors’ policies on individuals or society, or the application of marketing to resolve problems. The scope of scholarship at JPP&M broadly entails legislation, regulation, procedures, or practices, whether codified or not, that are implemented by governments, businesses, or other societal actors that affect the marketplace and the welfare of individuals or society. We look next at a few of the current opportunities for marketing scholars.
The COVID-19 Pandemic and Public Health
The COVID-19 pandemic has become the greatest public health crisis in the past century. While the short-term consumer health implications and socioeconomic, political, and policy consequences are apparent, COVID-19 will likely have further multidimensional ramifications for marketing and public policy for many years to come. Some of these are addressed in a series of commentaries solicited by the editor teams of JPP&M from experts across various domains of marketing. (See Scott et al. 2020 and https://www.ama.org/the-covid-19-pandemic-through-the-lens-of-marketing-and-public-policy/.) The topics cover various consumer decision-making and health-related issues, supply chain management, responses to uncertainty and risk at consumer and global, national, and local policy levels, and the broad issues related to marketing and the pharmaceutical industry (Esper 2020; Hamilton 2020; Sarkees et al. 2020; Stewart 2020). The editorial and commentaries also point to the intersection of the pandemic crisis and many topics historically examined in JPP&M, including preparation and reactions to disasters, access to food and resources for vulnerable populations, race and inequality in the marketplace, consumer privacy, and sustainability and environmental issues (e.g., Bublitz et al. 2020; Crockett and Grier 2020; Brough and Martin 2020; Mende and Misra 2020; Mittelstaedt 2007). Drawing from the commentaries, Scott et al. (2020) offer an overview of possible research issues related to the pandemic, but clearly many new considerations continue to emerge for which critical research needs and opportunities for the JPP&M community to contribute will remain very significant.
Inequalities and Inequitable Treatment
Our editorship began with the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, followed by various Supreme Court rulings on issues that included affirmation of LGBTQ protection under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Bostock v. Clayton County), and it ended with protests and demands for racial justice. JPP&M has a significant history of examining unfairness, inequality, and disadvantage regarding marketing practices. In addition to research on disadvantaged populations, including “protected,” “vulnerable,” or even “targeted” populations (e.g., children, impoverished, immigrant), the journal has examined discrimination, gender (e.g., Hein et al. 2016), race (e.g., Bone et al. 2019), sexual orientation (e.g., Hildebrand et al. 2013), and gender identity (e.g., Patel and Feng in press), and intersectionality (e.g., Saatcioglu et al. 2016).
JPP&M is an outstanding outlet for research that examines policies and practices that interfere with equal access to markets and to products and services (Fitzgerald, Bone, and Pappalardo 2020). One area ripe for such research is the embedding of prior biased decision making into algorithms and artificial intelligence systems that support marketing, or the creation of such systems without explicitly testing for implicit biases (Federal Trade Commission 2016). A second is the analysis of marketing and policy decisions and their outcomes using gendered data (and its intersection with race, ethnicity, and other demographic characteristics) to identify the consequences of incomplete data on half the world’s population, as well as the corresponding remedies and opportunities of closing this knowledge gap. 1
Politicization of Science
A common policy focus is how to educate people on the prevailing science to help them make evaluations and decisions that can enhance their well-being. However, in the United States, we now see significant political divides in the degree of individuals’ trust and confidence in scientific experts regarding policy-related matters (Funk et al. 2019). The simple act of wearing (or not wearing) a mask in response to COVID-19 has shown that political orientation must be considered in even seemingly mundane education efforts. This suggests the need to modify our extant models (in particular, health-related and risk models) to explicitly account for the extent to which political orientation influences beliefs, compliance, risk, and efficacy assessments (Caglar, Murdock, and Kanuri 2020).
Depending on political orientation, U.S. citizens differ in their view of whether, or to what degree, scientists should be involved in policy decisions. This raises the thorny issue of what roles scholars who care about policy problems should and can play. Clearly, in the mind of the public, one cannot play both advocate and objective scientist. JPP&M insists on objectivity and benefits from its politically diverse editorial board and reviewers.
Some Final Thoughts About Publishing in JPP&M
As we step down from our editorial roles, we share some final thoughts for those interested in publishing marketing and public policy research, and particularly in Journal of Public Policy & Marketing.
Multiple Goals for JPP&M Articles
The journal is unique, and the editors, reviewers, and authors face unique challenges. The systemic challenge is that the work we publish must meet multiple standards that are all too often viewed as being alternatives. The work must be conceptually and empirically excellent. The work must have important implications for public policy; in addition, a path to possible implementation must be clear. This standard is more challenging than the conventional internal/external validity standard because it adds a “so what” criterion. If, for political, budget, or legal reasons, the path to implementation seems impossible, then the “so what” contribution is not met. Authors must understand the institutional constraints their proposed remedies must navigate. In practical terms, segments must be capable of being targeted, messages must be capable of being delivered with similar strength as they are in the stimuli, beliefs must translate into likely actions, and beneficial institutional changes must be imaginable. For all of us, there is a line between what is possible and what is aspirational. We make no progress without aspirations, but there is no practical contribution in advocating impossible or imaginary changes.
The positive side of meeting this three-pronged standard is that the work published can have a significant and positive impact on the world we live in. One of the most gratifying parts of our editorship has been knowing that JPP&M research was presented to policymakers such as a U.S. House Committee, state legislatures, and regional commission, research collaborative, and industry associations, as well as at a Federal Trade Commission conference (Andrews, Walker, and Kees 2019; Bone et al. 2019, Catlin, Pechmann, and Brass 2015, Grier and Perry 2018).
The Daunting Challenge of Crafting Relevant Work
A goal of JPP&M authors is to conduct research that has meaningful consequences for the world outside the ivory tower. The fundamental problem is HOW? While understanding no journal article is without limitations and all academic research is subject to various resource constraints, drawing on our tenure as editors, we identify some common pitfalls for authors to consider.
Who are your study participants and who is the target population?
Researchers submitting to JPP&M should strive for samples that are legitimate representations of the population to whom policy makers will seek to generalize and potentially aid. Legitimate representations mean that participants are comparable to the target population with respect to the individual factors that can influence how they respond to stimuli or the perceptions they reveal. This does not preclude use of MTurk or student samples, particularly for submissions with multiple studies and where appropriate screening mechanisms can be used. It does not necessarily preclude drawing all data from 15 in-depth interviews or a single community. It does mean identifying the most critical subject-specific characteristics that will drive responses and assessing similarity. Note: this means that identifying a participant pool often must be both theoretically and practically driven.
How are the data collected?
When considering procedures and how data are collected, there are critical questions related to how method factors affect findings and how the findings will extrapolate to policy-relevant contexts. Of course, across studies, the findings must ensure internal validity and inspire confidence that results will replicate. The major challenge in many submissions is that, while maintaining internal validity and replicability, the findings must be actionable. When the work is experimental, a key hurdle is creating stimuli, data collection procedures, contexts and settings, and delivery of manipulations that are possible to implement in the marketplace. While there are a number of potential problems in regard to obtaining policy-relevant and actionable findings, some common issues include the following: (1) forcing subjects to process information that under normal market circumstances they will always ignore, (2) presenting a choice context that is totally unlike “real” marketplace behaviors and choices, (3) creating demand effects, often unintentionally, because the manipulations and/or the variables of interest are made hyper-salient, (4) manipulating variables or examining moderators that a policy maker cannot practically identify, assess, or influence, and (5) using proxy variables that are unrelated or marginally related to an actual behavior, particularly when a critical barrier is translating what a person believes into how an individual will actually behave in the marketplace. Note that a pitfall common to both experimental, survey, and qualitative work is offering implications for variables that a policy maker cannot pragmatically ascertain or affect. Although research may uncover many latent factors that influence a consumer’s behavior, unless a policy maker can identify, effectively reach, and deliver interventions to the consumer segments who are “high” or “low” on some dimension, the value to policymakers is limited.
How can the findings be used?
Authors should ask themselves, “if my hypotheses are supported, who would do what and how would it make the target situation better?” The answer requires an understanding of the resources, constraints, and motivations associated with specific policy actors. The scope of actions that government agencies may take is limited by law and resources, and the actions that businesses are willing to take is limited by numerous vested interests. One weakness of any proposed intervention is the possibility that it cannot be executed by some policy actor in a meaningful way.
So, what can we do as researchers?
This is a daunting and formidable list for researchers to consider, and certainly these specific points do not capture all issues. Our purpose here is to offer suggestions on how studies could be enhanced in some ways to increase relevance. There is no “perfect” study or set of studies, and we are not suggesting all work must lead to some major, specific policy action. Very useful articles can explicate a problem so that the article identifies issues and possible actions for a specific actor in the policy community. An article may simply reveal a previously unknown or ignored problem, but it must include a realistic view of how the research may lead to useful remedies and who would undertake such solutions. Findings should be useful as one source of information that, in combination with other studies and factors, can be beneficial to policy deliberations.
We believe that researchers publishing in JPP&M should consider the previous points, recognize limitations of their work, and consider how future studies could help address the shortcomings. Given that policymakers are a key target audience for JPP&M research, it is important to address limitations, particularly for readers who may not be seasoned policy researchers.
Empirical Evidence: The Importance of Main Effects (Only) for Policy Recommendations
There are also some more mundane issues related to marketplace implementation of policy recommendations. In evaluating the evidence in support of some end goal, academic reviewers often encourage the authors to consider effects of various moderators to develop or extend theory. Novel moderators of effects that (1) enhance the theoretical contribution or (2) explain the domain of effects that qualifies or establishes the boundary conditions of significant effects of policy interventions or manipulations can bolster the perceived contribution. Furthermore, for the vast majority of manuscripts submitted to JPP&M, reviewers encourage authors to develop and emphasize the usefulness of findings for policy applications. However, for useful and actionable implications for policy decisions, the most important effects for recommendations often are main effects in which there are no or very limited interactions. Given the importance of policy recommendations for JPP&M, we, as editors, have felt that this simple point can be overlooked by many policy researchers and reviewers.
Consider the plots offered in Figure 1 that address the potential effectiveness of a policy-based intervention designed to encourage compliance to safety guidelines to minimize the spread of the coronavirus (e.g., social distancing, wearing a mask in public locations, frequent hand washing). The dependent variable is the frequency of engaging in prescribed behaviors. There are two hypothetical segments (i.e., levels of a moderator) considered. These differences might be those at lower versus higher risk for severe health consequences, younger versus older consumers, those with different political leanings (Democrat vs. Republican), etc.
Hypothetical effects for an intervention to promote consumer safety behaviors to minimize the spread of the coronavirus.
Consider three possible outcomes. In Figure 1, Panel A, there is a strong favorable main effect of the intervention, consistent with what would be desired by the policy makers, and there is no interaction. The main effect is significant and favorable across both of the two segments. In contrast, for the plot in Panel B, the intervention operates as desired for Segment 1, in which there is a favorable effect of the intervention. For Segment 2 in Panel B, however, there is the opposite effect. For exposure to the intervention, there is an unintended consequence in which exposure reduces compliance behaviors. Assuming near equal group sizes, the plot suggests a nonsignificant main effect of the intervention with a significant disordinal interaction. Plot C suggests a main effect of the intervention but potential differences across the moderator/segments. The exposure to the intervention has favorable effects for both segments, but it is stronger for Segment 1.
It can be argued that in terms of actionable, clear, and beneficial recommendations for policy, the strong, simple main effect in Panel A is the superior result, but it is the one that is often critiqued by reviewers for being conceptually uninteresting and offering little contribution. The plot in Panel B with the disordinal interaction is very important for policy makers to understand, but because it indicates the strong unfavorable effect for one group, there is no direct policy recommendation for an intervention that would benefit the majority of consumers. 2 Panel C might lead to use of the intervention, but this likely depends on the importance of Segment 2 (is it consumers at the greatest health risk?) and the relative effect size within this segment.
In summary, when the primary goal is to produce a strong, actionable, and impactful policy recommendation, a (positive) main effects–only finding can be the most favorable outcome. This is important to recognize in policy intervention research or similar research targeted at JPP&M. This general argument would extend to other applied findings outside of policy in which marketing managers might find the direct, main effects–only finding the most useful and actionable. Showing that the main effects remain favorable and significant across various moderating conditions or consumer segments demonstrates an absence of crucial boundary conditions that may be very beneficial from a public policy or practical managerial perspective.
Conclusion
It has been our distinct honor to be the first multi-editor team to serve as Journal of Public Policy & Marketing stewards. It is truly a great community of scholars that we feel all work together to generate knowledge that is beneficial to addressing today’s crucial issues. We invite all scholars who want to address these important and pressing problems to become part of the vibrant JPP&M community. We appreciate the work of authors, AEs, special issue editors, editorial review board members, and non-ERB reviewers who donate their time and expertise. We thank the AMA staff who worked with us through all the transitions of the past three years. Finally, we are grateful to those in this broader community who seek to improve policy decisions and the quality of life for consumers around the world.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.