How I Wrote This

Can the architecture behind large language models predict where a customer journey is headed? Zipei Lu (Baruch College) and P.K. Kannan (University of Maryland) treat a hospitality firm’s customer touchpoints like words in a sentence. They build a transformer whose attention patterns vary from customer to customer. They talk with co-host Brett Gordon about how the paper moved across journals before landing at JMR and what they learned from industry feedback.Lu, Zipei, and P.K. Kannan (2026), “AI for Customer Journeys: A Transformer Approach,” Journal of Marketing Research, 63(1), 1-26.JMR: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00222437251347268SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4684617

Eight years. Seven rounds of revision. And a first submission where every reviewer recommended reject. In this episode, JMR Co-Editor Karen Winterich talks with Tanuka Ghoshal (Baruch College) and Tripat Gill (Wilfrid Laurier University) about their paper, "The 'Dark Is Hardworking' Association: How Skin Tone Affects Perceptions of Service Providers in India." Colorism in India has long been documented as a fair-skin premium, but this research uncovers the opposite: darker skin-toned professionals are perceived as more hardworking, and therefore more competent, in domains like financial and technical services. In the episode, you'll hear how an editorial team's nudge toward human branding sent the project in an entirely new direction, why the attractiveness angle wasn’t retained as a focus, and the real costs of collecting quality data in India.

If you've submitted a paper, odds are that you’ve experienced rejection. Does that mean the idea is dead? Not necessarily. Sometimes it just needs the right angle, and the right review team, to become something bigger than you first imagined. Recorded during Summer AMA, this episode brings together the 2026 JMR award winners for a joint conversation with Karen Winterich and Brett Gordon. First, Shiri Melumad and Robert J. Meyer discuss their Paul E. Green/Vithala R. Rao Award–winning paper, "How Listening Versus Reading Alters Consumers' Interpretations of News", built without an existing playbook to follow. Then Stephan Seiler and Anna Tuchman join to talk about their Weitz-Winer-O'Dell Award–winning paper, "The Impact of Soda Taxes: Pass-Through, Tax Avoidance, and Nutritional Effects," co-authored with Song Yao, and why an interdisciplinary, policy-relevant paper found staying power across marketing, economics, and public health. Both teams reflect together on how a review process can develop a paper, the risks of racing the clock on a fast-moving topic, and what it takes to get research seen once it's published.

With a new editorial team taking the helm at the Journal of Marketing Research, Brett and Karen sat down with the new Editor-in-Chief, Raphael Thomadsen, to discuss the team's vision for the journal's future, laid out in a recently published “Vision Editorial” article. They have ideas for streamlining the revision process, accepting shorter-form articles, and bridging the gap between behavioral, managerial, and quantitative areas. Our conversation with Raphael went beyond the article, probing the “how” behind his strategy and drawing on our own experiences at the journal to explore the nuances of these shifts. It’s an inside look at the challenges ahead and what this new direction really means for authors and the field.

A special send-off episode: the five outgoing JMR co-editors - Rebecca Hamilton, Brett Gordon, Raghu Iyengar, Kapil Tuli and Karen Winterich - come together for a candid look back at their term: what surprised them, the hardest calls they had to make, the biases they caught in themselves, and what they wish authors knew about working with an editor. Reflection, advice, and a few hard truths from the other side of the review process

A PhD student's curiosity about open innovation. That's all it took to spark a research journey into why companies like Allbirds give away their proprietary technology—and why consumers reward them for it. JMR Co-Editor Karen Winterich speaks with Martin Schreier (WU Vienna) and Darren Dahl (UBC) about their paper, "The Open Design Effect”, co-authored with Lukas Maier (WU Vienna). The study revealed that when firms openly share internal knowledge with the outside world—what they call "inside-out" innovation—consumers perceive societal benefits and show greater willingness to pay. In the episode, you'll hear how a research stay in Vancouver brought the team together, why a Tesla example became a "lightning rod" through multiple review rounds, and the hard-won lessons about construct precision in today's publication landscape.

GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy are changing more than just waistlines—they're disrupting the grocery aisle. JMR Co-Editor Brett Gordon speaks with Sylvia Hristakeva (Cornell), Jura Liaukonyte (Cornell), and Leo Feller (Numerator) about their paper, "The No Hunger Games: How GLP-1 Medication Adoption is Changing Consumer Food Demand.” The study linked GLP-1 usage survey data to 150,000 households' purchase data, finding that grocery spending declines by approximately 5% within six months, concentrated in processed, calorie-dense categories. Spending reverts to pre-adoption levels upon stopping the medication. In the episode, you’ll hear how quickly the project came together and the challenges of working on such a high-profile topic.Paper on SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5073929Paper at JMR: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00222437251412834

Questions about using AI responsibly in your research or checking ‘Yes’ to AI use in the submission process? This special episode has JMR Editor in Chief, Rebecca Hamilton, and co-editors Kapil Tuli and Raghu Iyengar joining co-hosts Brett Gordon and Karen Winterich to discuss the role of AI in authorship and the editorial process. 

A single demographic statistic about car leasing. That's all it took to spark a fascinating research journey into how the perceived stability of our romantic relationships shape the products we choose to rent versus own. In this episode, Yuechen Wu  joins JMR Co-Editor Karen Winterich to reveal the story behind "Who Will I Be Without You? Consequences of Perceived Romantic Relationship Status Stability on Product Rentals." From that initial nugget of curiosity to navigating the challenges of the review process, Yuechen and co-authors Jared Watson and Ali Faraji-Rad share how persistence—and friendship—can transform a curious observation into groundbreaking consumer research.

To figure out how much a company is worth, start with its customers. This episode explores customer-based corporate valuation and how individual buying behavior ultimately drives firm value. Join JMR Co-Editor Brett Gordon as he speaks with Dan McCarthy (University of Maryland) and Peter Fader (University of Pennsylvania) about their paper, “Customer-Based Corporate Valuation for Publicly Traded Noncontractual Firms,” and how they used publicly disclosed customer metrics to value companies like Wayfair—work that even caught the attention of Wall Street.