The Editor’s Corner:

Welcome to our April 2011 issue. I am positive you will find several articles interesting, informative, and, most importantly, usable. As always, my thanks goes out to the reviewers and authors who spent numerous hours moving these manuscripts to the level of quality expected and deserved by readers such as you. As mentioned in my Editor’s Corner in our December 2010 issue, the type and frequency of questions that both Associate Editor Charles Duke and I hear repeatedly asked at Meet the Editors academic conference sessions gave me the idea for my two-part answer to the general question, “How can I get published in the JME?” The previous corner covered the topics of avoiding a desk rejection and preparing the front-end of your manuscript. This corner covers three other topics: (a) proving your research and analytical skills, (b) developing/ making recommendations, and (c) preparing your revised manuscript (assuming you get an invite for such). The following observations assume that your manuscript is empirically based. If it is a theoretical piece, other issues come into play. They will be addressed in a future corner. When proving your research and analytical skills, you are demonstrating that you have tackled your study by successfully employing the most appropriate methodologies for the purpose of your research. It is extremely important that the front-end of your manuscript leads reviewers into the methods section of your manuscript. This generally means that the front-end of your manuscript has led to the development and statement of testable hypotheses for which you have collected data that is, in fact, testable. Avoid saying or doing things that cause any disconnects between your manuscript’s front-end and its methodology section. For example, we often find authors using different terminologies for dependent variables in these two sections. One of your key objectives here is make sure reviewers understand how you implemented or executed your study. If there is doubt here, the reviewers will become suspicious and possibly make one of two conclusions: you did not know what you were doing or you are not revealing all the needed information because you did not execute properly. Reviewers should not be forced to speculate on methodological issues. This necessitates that you provide specific details in areas such as sampling methods, sample size and subgroups, and independent versus independent variables. If reviewers are confused about how your data was generated, they will be naturally suspicious about any reported findings. Assuming you have convinced reviewers that you used the right set of methodologies to collect relevant data, the next hurdle is to convince them that the data was properly analyzed. Make sure you conduct a logical and systematic analysis of your data. Although many authors like to show their analytical prowess by using advanced statistical techniques, it is recommended that authors not overlook the need to first report descriptive statistics. Reviewers like to see these findings prior to advanced analysis findings. Other analytical tips include using factor and reliability analysis prior to discussing results that aggregate data, making sure you test for differences between groups before aggregating data, and testing for subgroups in data. Reviewers like to see you dig deep into your data and look for interesting relationships. Superficial analysis sometimes suggests superficial thinking. Although some of your findings may not be that interesting, reviewers like to know that you at least found them. And remember that published articles often do not include findings or other material provided in prepublication manuscripts. Whereas the next suggestion may seem obvious, it does need mentioning. The use of properly formatted and labeled tables is critical if you want reviewers to understand what your analysis found. For example, they should not have to guess that the number five on your survey scale or in one of your tables is equal to “completely satisfied.” When reporting findings, try to avoid simply repeating numbers and statistics (found in your tables) in the body of your manuscript. This wastes space and becomes an irritant for reviewers who may feel their time is being unfairly consumed. Offering recommendations to our journal’s readers is a major expectation of our reviewers. We only want to publish articles that our readers can use to improve their role as marketing educators. This requires you to identify and clearly communicate the implications of your work. In fact, it is often a good idea to put a meaningful implication in the abstract section of your manuscript. One of the first selfchecks you should perform is to ask yourself if your original premise or thesis has been addressed. It may be also prudent at this point in the manuscript to remind the reader (reviewer)