The unheard voice of marketing research: Breaking through to news and social media

Despite efforts by business schools, journals, and researchers to broaden the reach of marketing research beyond academia, the average article earns merely 0.6 press mentions and 3.5 social media citations. This study investigates how academic marketing research gains attention in news and social media and which factors mediate this process. Through an analysis of 15,900 marketing articles published from 2011 to 2019 and two experiments involving journalists and PR managers, we show that female co-authorship, involving a practitioner, and choosing a topic related to Better-Marketing-For-A-Better-World leads to substantially more news and social media mentions. Specifically, including at least one female author or a practitioner can boost press citations by 20% and 57%, respectively. In addition, we identify several other factors related to writing style, topic choice, and journal chararcteristics significantly impacting media attention.