Dr. Daniel Rajaratnam, clinical professor of marketing at the Naveen Jindal School of Management, and his coauthors were awarded the Sheth Foundation Best Paper Award for their paper published in 2014 in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS).
The paper, “The Intellectual Ecology of Mainstream Marketing Research: An Inquiry into the Place of Marketing in the Family of Business Disciplines,” was published in the journal in May 2014. It was selected by the editorial review board from 38 papers published out of 539 papers submitted to JAMS in 2014.
The paper examines the contribution of mainstream marketing research to business disciplines. Despite considerable research productivity and sophisticated methodologies, leading marketing scholars for more than three decades have argued that mainstream marketing research has lost its influence among business disciplines.
“We looked at the concerns, attempted to understand marketing’s challenges, conducted a bibliometric analysis to explore the patterns of influence among leading academic journals in business disciplines,” Rajaratnam said. “We also came up with recommendations to move marketing’s influence back to its once prominent position among business disciplines.”
What sets the paper apart, Rajaratnam said, is that it looks at an old problem in a new way. It not only summarizes the decades-old concerns, but it also provides empirical evidence and concrete recommendations for change and influence. The work also shows which business disciplines have the greatest influence over researchers and practitioners.
Rajaratnam, who joined the Jindal School in fall 2014, teaches undergraduate marketing research, retailing and distribution, and graduate marketing management. He and his co-authors will receive the award at the annual Academy of Marketing Science Conference in Denver in May.
