Journal of Consumer Research

JCR publishes papers of the highest quality on topics in consumer research. Editors: Bernd Schmitt, June Cotte, Markus Giesler, Andrew Stephen, and Stacy Wood.

Don’t Exhaust Your Reader

Reading most papers isn’t much fun. It is therefore important that you get your key points across plain and simple. Don’t exhaust your reader with hyper-complicated and overdetailed tables or figures, dozens of trivial pretests, and numerous unnecessary studies and analyses to prove your points. And don’t create a Web Appendix that overflows with even more tables, figures, studies, pretests and analyses. Worse, don’t engage in an “exhaustion strategy” to cover up that you don’t have much to say. Great papers focus on the essence of a theory or consumer problem and provide a compelling solution. They are simple, beautiful, and a pleasure to read.

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“Just a Thought ….from Bernd Schmitt”
Non-binding ideas for JCR authors.

Bernd Schmitt

Bernd is the Robert D. Calkins Professor of International Business at Columbia Business School and the Editor-in-Chief of JCR.

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