Ask a Professor: Advice from leading professionals in the academic marketing field

Hari Sridhar

Senior Associate Dean and Professor of Marketing, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University; former Editor in Chief, Journal of Marketing (2022–2025)

Research interests: marketing strategy, B2B marketing, AI in marketing, and marketing analytics

What’s one piece of advice you would give to scholars looking to get published in the AMA journals?

The paper that survives review is rarely the one with the most sophisticated method. It is the one whose central question a reader already cares about by the end of the first page. Before you run a single model, write the one sentence that says what we believe now and what your paper will change. If you cannot write that sentence cleanly, the design will not save the paper.

How can early-career researchers make the most of conference attendance?

Present work that is early enough to still change, not work you have already finished. The value of a conference is in the conversations it starts, not the line on your CV. Pick two or three people whose work you admire, read it beforehand, and ask each of them one specific question. That is worth more than ten introductions.

Pick two or three people whose work you admire, read it beforehand, and ask each of them one specific question. That is worth more than ten introductions.

How are you helping undergraduate students prepare for today’s uncertain job market?

The market feels uncertain to students because AI is taking over the entry-level tasks they expected to be hired for. At Mays, we treat that as the opening rather than the threat: We teach them to be the person who decides what to ask AI and who can judge whether the answer is any good, not the person doing the work the machine now does. In one of our marketing courses, students run a full campaign analysis with AI in an afternoon, then spend class arguing about which of its recommendations to trust and why. The student who learns to ask the sharper question and defend the better judgment is not threatened by this market. That student is the one it rewards.