INTEREST CATEGORY: INNOVATION AND TECH
POSTING TYPE: Revisits

Author: Cecilia Nalagon

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IJRM Call for Papers

Special Issue on:

The Tensions and Opportunities of New Technologies in Marketing

Edited by Jeff Inman (University of Pittsburgh), Robert Meyer (University of Pennsylvania), David Schweidel (Emory University) and Raji Srinivasan (University of Texas-Austin)

EXTENDED SUBMISSION DEADLINE: July 31, 2022

In recent years, new technologies across a wide variety of domains have had a transformative effect on people’s lives, more generally, but specifically on products and markets. In marketing, these impacts range from the dizzying range of new products and services, marketplaces, and platforms which have dramatically changed how consumers learn, buy and experience products across a range of domains, including for example, healthcare, entertainment, shopping, and financial investing.

While many technological developments have been arguably welfare-enhancing, including the democratization of information, increased connectivity among individuals, and the expanse of online buying and experience opportunities with lower information search and pricing—they have also exposed new tensions, with welfare-destroying implications, including threats to individual privacy, the spread of misinformation, digital inequity, and digital discrimination.

This special issue seeks to publish innovative papers that examine the theoretical and managerial implications of tensions and opportunities posed by new technologies in marketing. Some examples of topics include (but are not restricted to):

• Can consumer privacy be preserved in an increasingly digitized world? As customer data is produced and gathered across devices and touchpoints with firms, is privacy a necessary casualty of marketing efforts? What are consumers’ responses to an increasing loss of privacy arising from increased information sharing?
• What are the intended and unintended consequences of highly targeted marketing communications? While marketers seek to target individuals with relevant content, depending on the product/services being offered, are some populations more or less susceptible to such communications? Are regulations necessary to limit the extent to which marketing may be targeted?
• To what degree will consumers accept technology-provided recommendations and information? What steps can organizations take to increase consumer comfort with adopting technologies that ultimately reduce the costs associated with delivering products/services?
• What is the role of social media platforms in curbing the spread of misinformation? Is reducing the spread of misinformation compatible with their revenue models, user experiences, and their corporate structures?
• To what extent do algorithms contribute to social good and harm? How should firms making use of algorithms seek to leverage algorithms for improved well-being and also to combat the potential for adverse effects? Should algorithms designed to support marketing operations be subject to regulatory oversight to ensure that the outcomes do not inadvertently discriminate against protected classes?
• What are patients’ responses to the use of technology-assisted medical diagnoses and decision-making? Does this vary by the type of health contests and by the nature of the decisions (e.g., testing, diagnoses, prescription, treatment)? Are there limits on patients’ willingness to accept information provided by or derived via technology rather than from medical professionals? Are there conditions under which patients may be more or less comfortable interacting with technology in a healthcare setting than with a medical professional?
• How do we balance the potential gains from marketing automation with its impact on consumer well-being, including self-efficacy? AI methods make it possible to automate different marketing tasks, which can reduce demand for human labor. Advances in technology may fundamentally change the nature of work for marketing-related professionals such as salespeople and content creators. What are sales and marketing professionals’ responses to marketing automation technologies?
• What are the challenges to increasing employees’ openness to accepting data-derived support in workplaces? Are there boundaries on the nature of technological support that employees will accept and/or reject? What can organizations do to increase employees’ acceptance of “technology as a co-worker”?

We encourage multidisciplinary research on this topic at the intersection of marketing with behavioral sciences, computer science, economics, finance, information systems, psychology, sociology, and other disciplines. We also encourage the use of different methods of inquiry, and especially welcome multi-method investigations.

About IJRM

IJRM is the official journal of the European Marketing Academy. It “is now one of only five marketing journals that is a consensus “A” journal in most of the world” (Rust 2015, p. 123)[1] and “the top non-US based marketing journal” (Kannan 2018, p. 537)[2]. The journal has a healthy pipeline of papers and receives 800+ submissions per year. Importantly, IJRM is positioned as the supreme outlet for the most novel and innovative marketing papers. This means, at the edge, that IJRM is willing to take risk and publish potentially disruptive papers even if they are not perfect (actively acknowledging that there is no such thing as a “perfect paper”).

Here is the mission statement of the incoming editor team:

We strive to be authors’ first choice for their most novel, innovative, controversial, nonconformist, or otherwise disruptive marketing papers. We thereby hope to provide a vibrant platform for the exchange of novel and important marketing knowledge.

IJRM is also known for being a very author-friendly outlet. This includes fast turnaround times, a constructive and developmental review approach, and the avoidance of endless rounds of ping-pong between author teams and reviewers. If the authors wholeheartedly invest their deeds before the initial submission and during the review process, we hope to be able to bring good papers out faster than elsewhere. Time-to-market is too often neglected as a key factor in making marketing research relevant.

This special issue will be managed in this spirit.

Submissions

Papers targeting the special issue should be submitted through the IJRM submission system (http://www.editorialmanager.com/ijrm) and will undergo a similar review process as regularly submitted papers.

Important: when submitting your paper, please select as Article Type “SI: New Technologies”.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE has been extended to July 31, 2022.

All manuscripts must strictly follow the guidelines of the International Journal of Research in Marketing (see https://www.elsevier.com/journals/international-journal-of-research-in-marketing/0167-8116/guide-for-authors).

The pre-publication PDF of accepted papers will be made available online asap. The special issue is scheduled to be published in the first half of 2024.

Please contact David Schweidel at dschweidel@emory.edu in case you have questions with regard to the special issue.

Incoming IJRM Editor Team:

Martin Schreier (EIC), WU Vienna, Austria, martin.schreier@wu.ac.at

Renana Peres (Co-Editor), Hebrew University, Israel, renana.peres@mail.huji.ac.il

David Schweidel (Co-Editor), Emory University, U.S., dschweidel@emory.edu

Alina Sorescu (Co-Editor), Texas A&M, U.S., asorescu@mays.tamu.edu

IJRM Managing Editor:

Cecilia D Nalagon, cnalagon@umd.edu

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167811615000543

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167811618300533