The Value of Sticky Articles

1. The Value of Sticky Articles Joel Huber Duke University

2. Why Sticky? • Their messages are easily recalled • Their methods, theory and substantive results are replicated • And they are often cited • Sticky Articles are influential publications

3. Sticky ideas are Story like Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Successful publications are like successful ideas

4. How is a publication like a story? • Stories involve central characters who are in conflict, the story is about the resolution of that conflict • There are three kinds of stores in JMR publications • Theory stories • Methodology stories • Substantive stories

5. Three kinds of stories in JMR

6. Story strategy-target • Who is the story for? • The conflict of the story defines who is interested—targeting is critical • Core readers know the substantive area and will read your paper because it is central to their knowledge base—they are also your reviewers • Incremental readers are drawn into your story particularly if it is sticky—these are critical readers

7. Story strategy-content • Most publications have multiple stories, but one of the stories needs to have priority: Theory, method or substantive contribution • One story is appropriately missing—the researcher’s story—that personal story is irrelevant

8. How to make the story SIMPLE • Develop short simple ways to tell the story—research elevator speech • Avoid multiple stories • Define your paper in terms of a series of short sentences or propositions • Avoid acronyms • Be consistent in your terminology • Make up as few new labels as possible

9. How to make the story UNEXPECTED • The ending is known from the abstract, but the method remains surprising • Stress the surprising nature of your result • Prior conflict among researchers • Set up reasons for alternative outcomes • Measure peoples’ priors • Stress the logical nature of your final result—it is not quirky or random

10. How to make your storyEMOTIONAL • Generally emotions such as boredom, elation, anger and love have no place in a scholarly journal • However, academics are emotional about theories, methods and practice, so play that up • Further, the more the story is concrete, the more it will inspire emotions on the part of the reader

11. How to make your storyConcrete • Research is framed in abstract terms but your data and implications are or can be made so • Articles often open with a specific scenario of a shopper or a marketer posing a question about what they should or will do • In your discussion section bring up specific ways your results can be used

12. How to make the storyCREDIBLE • Build your results from methods accepted by your audience • Show your results in different contexts • Different products, markets, contexts and methods of analyses • Display your results in different ways • Verbally, graphically, tables • Credibility builds from making the same point from different perspectives

13. How to encourage sequels • A complete story is one that cannot replicated or modified in sequel form • It is hard to add to a circle--It will not be referenced as the story has been • Make your story as general as possible to encourage replications with respect to your theory, method or substantive results • Those replications are even better if they come from other researchers

14. Key ideas • Publications are like ideas…if they are easy to remember and valuable they will endure • Ideas that are sticky come from • Focused stories that are • Simple, concrete, emotional, unexpected and credible • Writing sticky papers is difficult, but critical for impact