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.

Have you ever been inspired to study a research problem, only to hear: “How is that relevant to marketing?” Such was the case for Muzeeb Shaik who wanted to understand if the impacts of fatal shool shootings extended to the marketplace. In this episode, JMR Co-Editor Karen Winterich talks with Muzeeb, John Costello, and Adithya Pattabhiramaiah to learn how they were able to build on initial data showing decreased grocery purchases to identify that heightened anxiety for consumption in public spaces not only impacts grocery purchases but also spending at food and beverage places, leading to their JMR article coauthored with Mike Palazzolo and Hari Sridhar.

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.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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.