Assessing the Capacity of Marketing Researchers to Estimate Managerial Relevance: An Empirical Exploration

The ability of marketing researchers to assess whether research is of value to their target audience of practitioners is a basic assumption underlying many of today's academic practices. Peer-reviews in prestigious marketing journals often require researchers to assess the managerial relevance. Researchers are also often expected to assert and outline managerial relevance for their own studies. However, systematic differences between science and practice call such an ability into question. An empirical study analysing 406 reviews by researchers and practitioners found that researchers struggle to accurately assess the managerial relevance of research. Moreover, their assessments tend to include an overprojection of scientific relevance at the expense of actual accuracy. It may therefore be necessary to adjust the claims of managerial relevance in journals, or alternatively the review processes themselves, if the validity of such claims is to be achieved.