jm-workflow

Journal of Marketing Workflow (jm-workflow)

Overview

This is the router. It does not replace any specialized skill; it tells you which jm- skill to use right now* for your Journal of Marketing manuscript.

Default assumption: unless the user says otherwise, treat the target as JM — the American Marketing Association's (AMA) premier general-audience marketing journal, published by SAGE on the AMA's behalf. JM's mission is to develop and disseminate knowledge about real-world marketing questions useful to scholars, educators, managers, policy makers, consumers, and other societal stakeholders. Its gatekeeping criterion is publishing "the most impactful, thought-leading substantive research in the marketing discipline." The non-negotiable bar: a substantive insight into an important marketing question, with genuine managerial, policy, or societal relevance — not methodological novelty for its own sake. JM is methodologically "big tent" (experiments, field studies, surveys, interviews, observational, and secondary data) and actively promotes empirics-first research grounded in real-world phenomena.

Editorial team: Editor in Chief Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp (UNC Kenan-Flagler); Coeditors Marc Fischer (Cologne), Kelly L. Haws (Vanderbilt), Maura L. Scott (Arizona State), Rebecca J. Slotegraaf (Indiana). Verify the live masthead on the AMA editorial-leadership page before naming conflicts or suggesting opposed reviewers.

When to trigger

• "What should I do next?" with a half-built JM manuscript
• You have results but the managerial/societal "so what" is thin
• A reviewer/editor questions whether the contribution is substantive or merely a new-context replication
• You received a JM decision letter (R&R or reject) and need to switch into response mode
• You keep bouncing between phenomenon, theory, method, and writing without a plan

Routing table

Current symptom	Next skill
Idea is vague; not sure it is substantive or JM-fit (vs. JMR / Mktg Sci)	jm-topic-selection
Phenomenon is real but the conceptual logic is underdeveloped	jm-theory-development
Front end reads as gap-spotting; substantive conversation not engaged	jm-literature-positioning
Design may not match the question (causality, field realism, level)	jm-methods
Have data; unsure about identification, exact-statistic reporting, replication	jm-data-analysis
Results exist but managerial/policy/societal relevance is thin	jm-contribution-framing
Tables/figures cluttered or lack a managerial takeaway	jm-tables-figures
Prose buries the substantive argument; off AMA house style	jm-writing-style
Ready to submit; need the ScholarOne (Sage Track) preflight	jm-submission
Want to understand how JM double-anonymized review works	jm-review-process
Received an R&R; need to plan and draft the response	jm-rebuttal

Default order

1. jm-topic-selection — lock a substantive, managerially relevant question with JM fit
2. jm-theory-development — build conceptual logic grounded in the real-world phenomenon
3. jm-literature-positioning — engage the substantive conversation; avoid new-context incrementalism
4. jm-methods — match design (experiment / field / survey / secondary / qualitative) to the question
5. jm-data-analysis — identification, exact p-values/SEs/effect sizes, JM Dataverse replication
6. jm-contribution-framing — turn results into a substantive + managerial/policy/societal contribution
7. jm-tables-figures — finalize exhibits with managerial takeaways in AMA style
8. jm-writing-style — full-manuscript prose polish (front-loaded substantive argument)
9. jm-submission — ScholarOne (Sage Track) preflight (anonymization, 50-page format, files)
10. jm-review-process — set expectations for double-anonymized, multi-round review
11. jm-rebuttal — after an R&R, plan revisions then draft the response letter

jm-tables-figures and jm-writing-style are late-stage polish. Do not invoke them while the substantive contribution or identification is still unsettled.

Decision shortcuts

• "I have a finding but no managerial story" → jm-topic-selection then jm-contribution-framing
• "My intro says 'no one has studied X in this context'" → jm-literature-positioning
• "Reviewer says it's a new-context replication" → jm-contribution-framing (substantive novelty)
• "My paper is mostly a clever model" → reconsider fit (Marketing Science / JMR), then jm-topic-selection
• "I reported p < .05" → jm-data-analysis (exact p-values, SEs, effect sizes)
• "Conditional acceptance — what do I deposit?" → jm-submission / jm-data-analysis (JM Dataverse packet)
• "Got an R&R" → jm-review-process then jm-rebuttal

Difference vs. JMR / Marketing Science / JCR stacks

• JM: substantive insight into real-world marketing questions with managerial/policy/societal relevance; "big tent" empirics-first; AMA/SAGE; 50-page inclusive limit; ScholarOne at mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ama_jm.
• JMR (AMA/SAGE sister journal): methods-forward empirical rigor — measurement, models, methods; route quant-methods-driven work here.
• Marketing Science (INFORMS): analytical, game-theoretic, and structural modeling — route modeling-for-its-own-sake here.
• JCR (Oxford UP / ACR): interdisciplinary consumer-behavior theory.

If your paper centers on a modeling/methods advance rather than a substantive marketing insight, JM is the wrong venue.

Anti-patterns

• Do not skip jm-contribution-framing — JM rejects work with no managerial/societal relevance.
• Do not dress up a new-context replication as a contribution.
• Do not let complex analysis substitute for an important, substantive question.
• Do not let jm-rebuttal draft a response letter before the manuscript is actually revised.