CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 400scientometrics and bibliometrics researchAcademic Writing and PublishingPsychology Research and Bibliometrics

The quest for citations: Drivers of article impact

Open access
Stremersch, Stefan, Verniers, Isabel, Verhoef, Peter C.·2007·Journal of Marketing
DOI 10.1509/jmkg.71.3.171
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Why do some articles become building blocks for future scholars, whereas others remain unnoticed? The authors aim to answer this question by contrasting, synthesizing, and simultaneously testing three scientometric perspectives—universalism, social constructivism, and presentation—on the influence of article and author characteristics on article citations. They study all articles published in a sample of five major journals in marketing from 1990 to 2002 that are central to the discipline. They count the number of citations each of these articles has received and regress this count on an extensive set of characteristics of the article (i.e., article quality, article domain, title length, the use of attention grabbers, and expositional clarity) and the author (i.e., author visibility and author personal promotion). They find that the number of citations an article in the marketing discipline receives depends more on “what is said” (quality and domain) and “who says it” (author visibility and personal promotion) than on “how it is said” (title length, the use of attention grabbers, and expositional clarity). The insights gleaned from this analysis contribute to the marketing literature and are relevant to scientific stakeholders, such as the management of scientific journals and individual academic scholars, as they strive to maximize citations. They are also relevant to marketing practitioners; they inform practitioners on characteristics of the academic journals in marketing and their relevance to decisions they face. Conversely, the insights also raise challenges regarding how to make journals accessible and relevant to marketing practitioners: (1) Authors visible to academics are not necessarily visible to practitioners; (2) the readability of an article may hurt academic credibility and impact, but it may be instrumental in influencing practitioners; and (3) it remains questionable whether articles that academics assess to be of high quality are also managerially relevant.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1509/jmkg.71.3.171

Cites

62 of 62 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The five selected journals (IJRM, JCR, JM, JMR, MKS) are a good representation of the marketing discipline.

    “These journals are a good representation of the marketing discipline (Stremersch et al., 2007).”

    From Unraveling scientific impact: Citation types in marketing journals (2015) · cites this paper as Stremersch et al., 2007

  • Title length, use of attention grabbers, expositional clarity, readability, number of tables and figures, footnotes, keywords, appendices, and equations are presentation determinants of citations.

    “Think of title length, the use of attention grabbers in the title and expositional clarity, such as readability, number of tables and fi gures, number of footnotes, number of keywords, number of appendices and number of equations (Stremersch et al., 2007).”

    From Unraveling scientific impact: Citation types in marketing journals (2015) · cites this paper as Stremersch et al., 2007

  • The negative effect of readability on citations is consistent with Stremersch et al. (2007), who argued that more readable articles may be less credible to a scientific audience.

    “The latter effect is consistent with Stremersch et al. (2007), who argued that more readable articles may be less credible to a scienti fi c audience.”

    From Unraveling scientific impact: Citation types in marketing journals (2015) · cites this paper as Stremersch et al. (2007)

  • The manner in which science is presented drives citations.

    “In the third perspective, the manner in which science is presented drives citations.”

    From Unraveling scientific impact: Citation types in marketing journals (2015) · cites this paper as Stremersch et al., 2007

  • Social constructivist determinants of citations may include the author's publication history, the author's affiliation, and a scholar's visibility and personal promotion.

    “Other social constructivist determinants of citations may include the author's publication history and the author's af fi liation (Judge et al., 2007) and a scholar's visibility and personal promotion (Stremersch et al., 2007).”

    From Unraveling scientific impact: Citation types in marketing journals (2015) · cites this paper as Stremersch et al., 2007

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 12

  1. Bauerly, Ronald J., Don T. Johnson and Mandeep Singh (2005), "Readability and the Impact of Marketing. In: Marketing Renaissance: Opportunities and Imperatives for Improving Marketing Thought, Practice, and Infrastructure," Journal of Marketing, 69 (October), 19-20.
  2. ----and ----(2001b), "Reference Diversity in JCR, JM and JMR: A Reexamination and Extension of Tellis, Chandy and Ackerman," Journal of Consumer Research, 28 (September), 313-323.
  3. Jacobs, Richard S., Kenneth R. Evans, Robert E. Kleine, III and Timothy D. Landry (2001), "Disclosure and its Reciprocity as Predictors of Key Outcomes of an Initial Sales Encounter," Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, 21 (1), 51-61.
  4. McAlister, Leigh (2005), "Unleashing Potential. In: Marketing Renaissance: Opportunities and Imperatives for Improving Marketing Thought, Practice, and Infrastructure," Journal of Marketing, 69 (October), 16-17.
  5. Merton, Robert K. (1968), "The Matthew effect in science," Science, 159 (3810), 56-63.
  6. Ujwal Kayande, Arnaud de Bruyn, Gary Lilien, Arvind Rangaswamy and Gerrit Van Bruggen ERS-2006-001-MKT http://hdl.handle.net/1765/7302 Interaction Between Shelf Layout and Marketing Effectiveness and Its Impact On Optimizing Shelf Arrangements Erjen van Nierop, Dennis Fok and Philip Hans Franses ERS-2006-013-MKT http://hdl.handle.net/1765/7632 Institutional Forecasting: The Performance of Thin Virtual Stock Markets
  7. Gerrit H. Van Bruggen, Martin Spann, Gary L. Lilien and Bernd Skiera ERS-2006-028-MKT http://hdl.handle.net/1765/7840 Irritation Due to Direct Mailings from Charities
  8. Merel van Diepen, Bas Donkers and Philip Hans Franses ERS-2006-029-MKT http://hdl.handle.net/1765/7832
  9. When Should Nintendo Launch its Wii? Insights From a Bivariate Successive Generation Model Philip Hans Franses and Carlos Hernández-Mireles ERS-2006-032-MKT http://hdl.handle.net/1765/7867 How Feedback Can Improve Managerial Evaluations of Model-based Marketing Decision Support Systems
  10. Ujwal Kayande, Arnaud de Bruyn, Gary Lilien, Arvind Rangaswamy and Gerrit van Bruggen ERS-2006-039-MKT http://hdl.handle.net/1765/7893 Moving in Social Circles -Social Circle Membership and Performance Implications Willem Verbeke and Stefan Wuyts ERS-2006-041-MKT http://hdl.handle.net/1765/7899 Polysemy in Advertising Stefano Puntoni, Jonathan E. Schroeder and Mark Ritson ERS-2006-043-MKT http://hdl.handle.net/1765/7898
  11. Categorization by Groups Rebecca W. Hamilton, Stefano Puntoni and Nader T. Tavassoli ERS-2006-044-MKT http://hdl.handle.net/1765/7900 Time-Series Models in Marketing
  12. Marnik G. Dekimpe, Philip Hans Franses, Dominique M. Hansses and Prasad A. Naik ERS-2006-049-MKT http://hdl.handle.net/1765/7984 Dynamic and Competitive Effects of Direct Mailings Merel van Diepen, Bas Donkers and Philip Hans Franses ERS-2006-050-MKT http://hdl.handle.net/1765/7948

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Stremersch, S., Verniers, I., & Verhoef, P. C.
Affiliations
  • Duke University (US)
  • Ghent University (BE)
  • University of Groningen (NL)
Corresponding author
  • Stremersch, Stefan
  • Verniers, Isabel
  • Verhoef, Peter C.
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Marketing
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2007-07
Volume
71
Issue
3
Pages
171-193
ISSN
  • 0022-2429 (ISSN-L)
  • 1547-7185
DOI
10.1509/jmkg.71.3.171
OpenAlex
W2134710744
Cited by
400
References
62
Citations by year
2026: 23 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 44 · 2023: 30 · 2022: 36 · 2021: 40 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 22 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 19 · 2015: 20 · 2014: 21 · 2013: 15 · 2012: 14
FWCI
15.10
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
  • Journal of Marketing (publishedVersion)
  • Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) (publishedVersion)
  • EUR Research Repository (Erasmus University Rotterdam) (publishedVersion)
  • University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • RePub (Erasmus University Rotterdam) (submittedVersion)
  • SSRN Electronic Journal (submittedVersion)
  • EUR Research Repository (Erasmus University Rotterdam) (submittedVersion)
  • RePub (Erasmus University Rotterdam) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) (submittedVersion)
  • University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Academic Writing and Publishing
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Psychology Research and Bibliometrics
Keywords
article citations, citation impact, market analysis, author visibility, author promotion, article quality, title length, readability, academic credibility, scientometrics, social constructivism, universalism, presentations, scientific journals

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review