Editorial---Acknowledging 2012 Marketing Science Contributors

During 2012, Marketing Science benefitted from outstanding contributions from many scholars in conducting the review process and in implementing other major initiatives. In this article, I would like to thankfully acknowledge these contributions. The Marketing Science advisory board, made up of Pradeep Chintagunta, Dominique Hanssens, John Hauser, Jagmohan Raju, Kannan Srinivasan, and Richard Staelin, has been an invaluable source of advice and support throughout the year. This group not only has some of the most prolific authors with long connections to Marketing Science, but it also has unparalleled editorial and leadership experience. The advisory group includes two former editors-in-chief of this journal, a current and two former marketing department editors of Management Science, as well the current and three former presidents of the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science. Their most important contribution in the past year has been in completing a strategic review of Marketing Science. As a part of the strategic review, the advisory group conducted a survey of the marketing science community that asked a wide range of questions about our field and Marketing Science, including important challenges faced by the journal. The end result of the survey was a report Chinatagunta et al. (2013) that appeared in January– February 2013 issue. The strategic review showed, among other things, the importance of Marketing Science to remain open to all topics and paradigms, and it reflected a strong preference for the journal to continue its focus on marketing issues. Thomas Fink of INFORMS helped us manage the survey logistics. The other major initiatives started in 2012 are two special sections, one associated with the Theory and Practice (TPM) conference and the other focused on emerging markets. The TPM initiative was a big success, both in terms of attracting high-quality papers and in keeping Marketing Science’s leadership in providing rigorous answers to substantive marketing questions. I thank the TPM organizers, Sunil Gupta, Don Lehmann, and Bernd Schmidt, as well as the 2012 conference committee, John Hauser, Dominique Hanssens, and Nadar Tavassoli, for their work in implementing the joint effort and initial screening of papers. The special section on emerging markets was likewise very successful in attracting interesting new papers to Marketing Science in the area of emerging markets. My thanks to the conference committee that included Kannan Srinivasan (co-chair), K. Sudhir (co-chair), Yuxin Chen, Koen Pauwels, Debu Purohit, Jagmohan Raju, and Jinhong Xie and the conference organizing committee, Eric Bradlow, Robert Meyer, and Jagmohan Raju. The Marketing Science review process requires highquality reviews with timely turnaround times. Given the complexity of the papers that we process, this work requires dedicated efforts from a large number of scholars. In 2012, Marketing Science benefited from outstanding work by 370 reviewers, 50 regular and guest associate editors, and 21 guest editorsin-chief.1 Many of our associate editors get involved from an early stage in the review process by suggesting potential reviewers. In addition, I often discuss papers with associate editors (and sometimes with reviewers), which also adds to their time commitment. Table 1 lists a subset of our regular and guest associate editors who completed the most reports or had the fastest turnaround times during 2012. Table 2 lists our editorial board members and ad hoc reviewers who completed the most reviews or provided the fastest turnaround times.