ACR is very pleased to announce that the JACR Policy Board has unanimously selected Angela Y. Lee as the next editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Association of Consumer Research, effective July 1, 2019, for a two-year term. Between now and July 1, 2019, the current EIC Joel Huber will work with Angela on the transition and serve as a resource as she prepares to take over on July 1.

As you know, in 2018 Joel Huber indicated his desire to step down as inaugural EIC of JACR as soon as possible. At its 2018 ACR Annual Meeting, ACR formally acknowledged Joel’s tremendous service to JACR and Donna Hoffman, Chair of the JACR Policy Board, presented him with a plaque. Owing to the challenges involves in recruiting a new EIC to replace Joel in a relatively short period of time, the JACR Policy Board determined that it is in the best interests of the journal to appoint an experienced and knowledgeable EIC to serve for a short (2-year) term while it determines the most appropriate succession policy going forward.

The Policy Board unanimously chose Angela to serve as the next EIC because she is one of the original architects of JACR. Indeed, it believes there is no stronger candidate at this juncture in the journal’s history. The board believes that Angela will make a fantastic EIC, helping set the journal on its forward path and taking it to greater heights. JACR is still in launch mode and the Policy Board is in the process of developing more open processes and guidelines for governance and succession.

The Policy Board has already begun working on a fully open succession process for the future and believes the strategy of a two-year EIC to shepherd the already committed issues through to publication while we finalize those processes is the best possible plan moving forward.

The responsibility of the new EIC is to oversee the processing of the issues that Joel has recruited (the last issue will be coming out in mid-2021) with the objective of steering the issue editors to come as close as possible to the mission and vision that the Policy Board has finalized. This mission and vision statement is included below.

The JACR Policy board plans to announce its first open call for the EIC by the end of this year (2019) and then review formal applications for the next JACR EIC in 2020.

JACR Mission and Vision
January 2019

The purpose of JACR is to offer a venue for consumer-oriented scholarship (including both original research and evaluative/integrative research reviews) with the aim of addressing specific marketplaces issues and challenges. JACR seeks to publish problem-focused papers on topics that are of interest and applicable to practitioners and that can be readily understood by practitioners. JACR strives to make contributions to practice by gathering and presenting collected wisdom on given topics. JACR also aims to bring the latest research relevant to specific applied consumer behavior topics to the academic community. To these ends, the journal is organized by topic-based issues directed by domain-expert guest editors under the guidance of the JACR editor-in-chief.

The goals of JACR are to:

1. Provide a high-quality forum for publication and dissemination of consumption-oriented knowledge.
2. Facilitate interdisciplinary awareness of consumer research and theory.
3. Support research communities within ACR by organizing collective efforts and encouraging discussions.
4. Facilitate the translation of consumer scholarship to a broad audience of relevant stakeholders, including practitioners in for-profit and not-for-profit organizations as well policy-makers.

To further these goals, JACR encourages authors to 1) take on a problem-oriented framing of the research; 2) prioritize field data analysis (either primary or secondary); 3) adopt layman language (i.e., avoid academic jargon); 4) invite commentaries by practitioners or domain experts outside of marketing.

The EIC will work closely with guest editors to actively promote the journal and the issues. Guest editors are encouraged to organize issue-driven conferences or ACR events (e.g., roundtables, special sessions at ACR meetings) to facilitate intellectual exchanges among scholars interested in the topic and to promote the themed issue to academics and non-academics with the goal of informing and/or influencing practice.

Ultimately, JACR seeks to be a respected and useful outlet for the scholarly work of ACR researchers. The focus on thematic issues, along with practical and actionable solutions, distinguishes JACR from other leading marketing journals—each issue presents a collection of expert scholars’ best thinking on the critical consumption-oriented challenges of the modern world.

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