How I Wrote This

For some, the strategies that save money require money they don't have. This episode explores the "poverty penalty" and how financial constraints make saving money a challenge for lower-income households. Join JMR Co-Editor Brett Gordon as he speaks with Yesim Orhun (University of Michigan) and Mike Palazzolo (UC Davis) about their award-winning article, "Frugality is Hard to Afford.

You might talk slang with your friends, but what happens when brands try using slang?  In this episode, JMR Co-Editor Karen Winterich talks with Bryce Pyrah and Alice Wang about their article, The Slang Paradox: Connecting or Disconnecting with Consumers?, coauthored with Yiyi Li and Ying Xie. Hear how Alice decided to give the idea a chance even though she was uncertain at first and how Bryce has already learned the importance of perseverance in Episode 21. 

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How I Wrote This is back for Season 3. In Episode 20, JMR Coeditors Karen Winterich and Brett Gordon go LIVE at Summer AMA in Chicago to chat with authors of this year’s JMR award-winning articles. You’ll hear from Yiyi Li about her Weitz-Winer-O’Dell award-winning article with Ying Xie and also from Michal Maimaran on her Paul E. Green/Vithala R. Rao Award article with Szu-chi Huang and Daniella Kupor. Listen in for insights on how external collaborations on relevant problems along with perseverance resulted in these impactful articles.

Does the content of a news article influence the effectiveness of ads placed within it? In this episode, JMR Co-Editor Brett Gordon discusses the recently published paper, “Attention Spillovers from News to Ads: Evidence from an Eye-Tracking Experiment,” with authors Andrewy Simonov (Columbia Business School),Tommaso Valletti, and Andre Veiga (both from Imperial College Business School). The idea for the paper was born in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the researchers learned that some advertisers were using “block lists” to prevent their ads from appearing on publishers' websites with pandemic-related news content. Did the advertisers have a point? Or, they wondered, might this be based on a misunderstanding of how we, the audience, actually engage with content and the ads that appear alongside it?

We all likely know that there’s valuable data in our social media posts, but just how can this be used? In this episode, JMR Co-Editor Karen Winterich talks with Verena Schoenmueller and Simon Blanchard about their paper, “Who Shares Fake News? Uncovering Insights from Social Media Users’ Post Histories,” co-authored with Gita Johar. What started out as a collaboration to understand the spread of misinformation led them to uncover the value of social media post histories. While user post history can indeed be useful in predicting fake news sharers, it likely holds much more insight for which this paper’s multi-method approach may serve as a foundation. 

Every business knows that customers who spend more in the past usually spend more in the future. But what if there are some products for which the opposite is true? That is, seeing a customer buy one of these categories means they are less–not more–likely to return to you. JMR Co-editor Brett Gordon speaks with Ayelet Israeli (HBS) and Eric Anderson (Kellogg) to learn about “canary categories,” as in “canary in a coalmine,” which predict exactly this type of behavior. Tune in to learn more about how the authors navigated a complex revision journey.

Ever wonder if those papers with 1000’s of citations are easy to publish? In this episode, JMR Co-Editor Karen Winterich chats with Sankar Sen from Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business to look back at this oldie but well-cited goodie: Does Doing Good Always Lead to Doing Better? Consumer Reactions to Corporate Social Responsibility, published in 2001 by Sankar and CB Bhattacharya, before CSR was a hot topic. Then listen in as they discuss how authors can develop research streams and consider future research opportunities regarding corporate social responsibility.

In part to of this special mini episode. Brett and Karen break down the review process and share insights from two current JMR reviewers.

On this special mini episode of How I Wrote This, Karen and Brett take you behind the scenes to hear about what it's really like to be a co-editor for a journal.

Brett Gordon sits down with JP Dube and Günter Hitsch from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and Peter Rossi from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. They discuss their influential paper, “Do Switching Costs Make Markets Less Competitive?” Since the 1960s, marketing and economics scholars have studied switching costs, with theoretical literature largely suggesting that these costs lead to higher prices among competing firms. However, when these three researchers conducted an empirical analysis, they found surprising results that challenged the prevailing wisdom. Join them as they share how their project evolved over time, including their measured response to critical feedback and how they expanded their initial scope of inquiry.