POSTING TYPE: Awards

Author: Cecilia Nalagon

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Announcement

The European Marketing Academy (EMAC) and the International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM) are pleased to announce the winners of the 2022 Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp Award for Long-Term Impact:

Reaping relational rewards from corporate social responsibility: The role of competitive positioning (IJRM, Pages 224–241, Vol. 24 (3), 2007

by

 Shuili Du (University of New Hampshire, USA), C.B. Bhattacharya (University of Pittsburgh, USA, and Sankar Sen (CUNY, USA)

and

Innovation diffusion and new product growth models: A critical review and research directions (IJRM, Pages 91-106, Vol. 27 (2), 2010

by

Renana Peres (The Hebrew University, Israel), Eitan Muller (Reichman University, Israel / New York University, USA), and Vijay Mahajan (University of Texas-Austin, USA).

Abstracts

Du et al:

This research examines the moderating influence of the extent to which a brand’s social initiatives are integrated into its competitive positioning (i.e., a CSR positioning) on consumer reactions to CSR. We find that positive CSR beliefs held by consumers are associated not only with greater purchase likelihood but also with longer-term loyalty and advocacy behaviors. More importantly, we find that not all CSR initiatives are created equal: a brand that positions itself on CSR, integrating its CSR strategy with its core business strategy, is more likely than brands that merely engage in CSR to reap a range of CSR-specific benefits in the consumer domain.

Peres et al:

Diffusion processes of new products and services have become increasingly complex and multifaceted in recent years. Consumers today are exposed to a wide range of influences that include word-of-mouth communications, network externalities, and social signals. Diffusion modeling, the research field in marketing that seeks to understand the spread of innovations throughout their life cycle, has adapted to describe and model these influences.

We discuss efforts to model these influences between and across markets and brands. In the context of a single market, we focus on social networks, network externalities, takeoffs and saddles, and technology generations. In the context of cross-markets and brands, we discuss cross-country influences, differences in growth across countries, and effects of competition on growth.

On the basis of our review, we suggest that the diffusion framework, if it is to remain a state-of-the-art paradigm for market evolution, must broaden in scope from focusing on interpersonal communications to encompass the following definition: Innovation diffusion is the process of the market penetration of new products and services that is driven by social influences, which include all interdependencies among consumers that affect various market players with or without their explicit knowledge.

Although diffusion modeling has been researched extensively for the past 40 years, we believe that this field of study has much more to offer in terms of describing and incorporating current market trends, which include the opening up of markets in emerging economies, web-based services, online social networks, and complex product–service structures.

Selection Procedure and Statement from Award Committee about the Winners

The International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM) and the European Marketing Academy (EMAC) established the IJRM long-term impact award in 2009. Named “The Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp Award for Long-Term Impact,” the award is given annually to papers published in IJRM that are judged to have made a long-term impact on the field of marketing.

All papers published in IJRM 10 to 15 years prior to the year the award is being presented are eligible. For the 2022 award, this means all papers published in the years 2007 through 2012 inclusive were included in the award selection (total of 192 papers). Papers published within this time frame that have already won this award or are (co)authored by Jan-Benedict Steenkamp and/or by the current IJRM Editor-in-Chief were not eligible.

The selection of the winning articles took place in four rounds. First, nominations were invited

from EMAC members and IJRM Editorial Board members. This year, the Award Committee received nominations for 71 papers. Second, the IJRM Editorial Board voted for their top 5 among these nominated papers. Third, after tallying this vote, a total of the 10 finalists with the most votes were forwarded to a final round in which each member of the editorial board had to vote for a single paper each. In a fourth round, the award committee met and selected the final winners, taking into account the voting, the papers, and the measurable statistics of their impact.

The 2022 Award Committee consisted of Bart Bronnenberg (chair), Darren Dahl, Tülin Erdem, and Gaia Rubera. After deliberation, the committee has selected two winners for the 2022 Steenkamp Award. The winning papers represented a tie in terms of both received the most votes from the editorial board and both have exceptionally high and comparable citations. Therefore, the committee feels both are deserving recipients of the 2022 Steenkamp Award.

The paper, Reaping relational rewards from corporate social responsibility: The role of competitive positioning by Shuili Du, C.B. Bhattacharya, Sankar Sen (2007), studies the importance of the effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on demand. It reports strong positive effects of consumers’ CSR beliefs about brands on purchase likelihood, loyalty, and advocacy behavior but only when these brands have a genuine CSR positioning combined with a true CSR business strategy. In other words, the paper finds that the positive demand effects of CSR are concentrated among firms that do not merely “talk the talk.” The paper combines a rich theoretical framework to arrive at a set of hypothesis tests about the purchase behavior of consumers as a function of CSR alignment in brand positioning and business strategy. Using carefully conducted empirical survey research, they find support for the central hypotheses in the paper.  Judging by the content and the citation record of this paper, its impact fully merits receiving the 2022 Steenkamp Award.

The paper, Innovation diffusion and new product growth models: A critical review and research directions by Renana Peres, Eitan Muller, and Vijay Mahajan (2010), reviews a vast literature on innovation and product growth models in the preceding decade and lays out a roadmap for future research on modeling the diffusion of new products and forecasting new product growth. For instance, extending the innovation diffusion literature into research on social networks, it proposes to leverage the developments in subfields studying, inter alia, ICT enabled networks and connected consumers, to model the diffusion of innovations at a much more granular and actionable level. It also synthesizes the vast literature from the late 1990s and early 2000’s on cross-country diffusion and the role of competition on diffusion. Here too, the paper suggests a framework for future research. The very high citation rate of this paper reflects its impact on shaping diffusion research in marketing since its appearance and makes it a deserving recipient of the 2022 Steenkamp Award.

2022 Award Committee:

Bart Bronnenberg (chairperson), Professor of Marketing, Tilburg University, Netherlands.

Darren Dahl, Innovate BC Professor and Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science, University of British Columbia, Canada

Tulin Erdem, Leonard N. Stern Professor of Business, Professor of Marketing, New York University, USA

Gaia Rubera, Amplifon Chair in Customer Science, Professor of Marketing, Bocconi University, Italy