People find interesting things that impact them. As a result, it probably shouldn’t be surprising that I’m interested in Zamudio and Meng’s work. It is after all on success as a marketing academic. That matters to me.
Promotions
The authors research which scholars got promoted. The promotions in question are from assistant to associate professor. This is arguably the biggest promotion in academia. What is more it is usually accompanied by tenure. Understanding what it takes to get this promotion is important to numerous academics.
Zamudio and Meng concentrate on marketing modelers. These are marketing academics who concentrate more on economics and mathematics-based research. (Most other marketers tend to use psychology as their base discipline.) The authors find that early job market attractiveness isn’t a good predictor of promotion. Coming from a prestigious school, therefore, doesn’t predict promotion much. On the other hand, what does matter is being part of a small number of successful communities of scholars.
Groups Matter
Interestingly they detail which big-name marketing modelers are in which group. Their work encounters the sort of difficult modeling challenges that real-world data throws up. The challenge is that being part of a “community” of successful scholars who work together is predictive of success. It seems highly plausible that training at a prestigious school increases your chance of working with a successful community of marketing modelers. After all, successful modelers mostly work at prestigious schools. This makes it hard to distinguish the impact of the community from the prestige of the school the scholar gained their PhD at. These are the sort of challenges that scholars love to get their teeth into. (Not me to be honest. Yet, many of my colleagues do. Good for them).
Research Productivity Leads To Success As A Marketing Academic
What else do they find? Research productivity matters. Publishing more articles in top-tier journals increases your chance of getting promoted.
We find that tier 1 publications positively influence both promotion and time to promotion.
Zamudio and Meng, 2014, page 13
This is reassuring but predictable. It would be strange if good publications didn’t improve a candidate’s promotion prospects.
In conclusion, their overarching message to candidates is sensible: ‘Get lots of good publications and work with the right people’. Good advice. Still, I would have preferred finding out that watching soccer and drinking beer is the secret to success as an assistant professor. Those skills seem undervalued. Not everyone can do it.
For more on academia see here, here, and here
Read: Cesar Zamudio and Meg Meng (2014) Which Modeling Scholars Get Promoted, and How Fast?, Customer Needs and Solutions, December.