Commentary on “Transitioning to New Paradigms for Societally Impactful Research: Recommendations from the TCR Impact Task Force and an Agenda”

Tasks and processes. SIR will change whom we engage with and how we conduct studies. Many of us choose very small learning and sharing communities; we do not regard ourselves as marketing researchers, preferring to identify ourselves more narrowly, for example, as consumer researchers, or even more narrowly as, say, behavioral decision theory researchers. Broader project scope (Ozanne et al. 2024, Web Appendix Figure W1) will expand our community from a small group of researchers interested in the same theories or methodologies to a more competitive, larger community of researchers and practitioners across disciplines who may consider theory as a “nice to have” but not a project driver or requirement. In sum, the tasks related to how we design and conduct studies will require significant changes if we want to carve out productive SIR programs.

I recommend attending multidisciplinary seminars on campus to become familiar with the terminology and methods to communicate with a broader community. For example, I used a campus contact to connect with government agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Cole et al. 2016), practitioners like CVS Health ( Keller et al. 2011 ), and medical centers like the Center for Healthcare Delivery Sciences ( Lauffenburger et al. 2023 ). As a result of my outreach efforts, I now work with physicians, pharmacists, consulting firms, AI experts, and a variety of health providers who market and measure health outcomes (Ozanne et al. 2024, Web Appendix Figure W6).

Talent and skills. SIR training will require broadening what we learn, whom we learn from, and how we communicate our value. The TCR Impact Task Force identifies five ambitious advances for expanding SIR (Ozanne et al. 2024, Table 1). Currently, there is little doctoral training on how to design and conduct good fieldwork (Ozanne et al. 2024). My experience indicates opportunity to learn about field research is further undermined if researchers will only work on SIR projects if they are the PI. And lack of exposure to multidisciplinary SIR teams makes it difficult to understand and communicate how marketing contributions are unique and valuable. I believe these factors make it difficult for fledgling SIR researchers to develop and share the necessary SIR talents and skills.

To develop SIR skills, I recommend choosing dissertation committee members and coauthors who do SIR. I chose my dissertation committee with distinctive abilities to help me develop the ability to create both external and internal validity. Much later in my career, 20 years after my doctorate, I took an ethnography class to learn more about behavior observation in the field. I have gained valuable insights as a non-PI despite relinquishing agency over goals, study design, and how to measure impact. To share SIR skills, I recommend building your personal brand with key constituencies through your words and actions. In my case, I started promoting health consumer research across campus after attending regular cross-campus behavioral and health seminars. I also conveyed my value proposition to others: I told my future collaborators that I could provide theories and hypotheses and language related to health communications.

Culture. We will be unable to implement the TCR Impact Task Force's recommendations until SIR is viewed as conducted by “top” marketing researchers and published in “top” journals. The good news is that, like the general public, many academics now think SIR topics are important, in theory at least; unfortunately, it is in practice where the factors noted above get in the way. One promising trend for the field is that younger academics are much more attuned to the need for SIR. The TCR (transformative consumer research) movement has also created a community for SIR, especially internationally. Culture is slow to change, but institutional progress will help, and hopefully SIR will be able to tap into the broader changes in social values and consciousness among marketing academics and businesses.

I recommend that marketing academics, to stay relevant and reflect the growing interest in SIR topics, both within and outside academia, make an effort to read SIR articles and attend SIR-related conferences and sessions. In terms of hiring and promotions, senior marketing faculty should keep a more open mind as to how to assess contribution and impact. I believe now, as I did when I started, that SIR fieldwork is essential for testing theory and identifying critical boundary conditions for theory development. SIR is like being in a lifelong diverse learning incubator, and I would not choose anything else!