![]() This week, the second essay of my dissertation and my job market paper was accepted for publication at the Journal of Marketing Research. I am grateful to the editors and reviewers, and to my co-authors who continued to show faith in this work and invest their energy into it. I started this project as a second-year student in my PhD in 2016. I loved it from the start. We had all the elements of a good empirical paper – clean and important intervention/shock (i.e., an exogenous mobile app server failure in a large omnichannel retailer’s app), the right data (i.e., cross-channel individual purchases and mobile app usage data), and a rich and fascinating body of research we could speak to (i.e., cross-channel marketing, service failures). Coming from a retail background pretty fresh into my PhD, the prospects excited me. The project was serendipitous and came out of my raw data exploration—plotting mobile app “events” where I started to notice huge spikes in server errors. What excited me even more is that the marketing team of the company providing the data had no idea and we alerted them to this tech/business challenge they later started taking seriously. So, when the paper has finally made it through the review process now in 2025, I feel compelled to share the journey of this paper. In doing so, I am hoping to share some lessons with current and future PhD students on JUST how much seeing a paper through takes. Not just the hours of analysis or writing, but the intangible inner work and growth. The paper is a story, a memory, a vivid reminder of moments that went into its making. When I look at it, I remember myself as a grad student in 2016 on co-author calls trying to figure out the early evidence in the data during holidays and weekends, in town and when traveling. I remember myself presenting this paper as my second-year qualifier for my PhD after a strenuous flight back in the midst of the Hurricane Harvey in 2017 (not to mention when I was struggling in my marriage and on the brink of a divorce). My earliest memories presenting this paper are from the 2017 marketing science conference, where I still remember stalwarts and experts on mobile marketing in the audience. So now that it’s “made it” in the traditional sense, it’s hard not to be emotional. It’s hard also not to be a little numb, if I am honest. It’s been a long journey. It is not often that you receive positive news in academia. And I say this recognizing that I am coming from a place of privilege--from a place of having been able to get my degree at a good school, from being able to immigrate to the U.S., from having had good mentors and a supportive family, from having had the fortune to be a part of a community and environment that creates opportunities, from having had “persistence and grit” as many would say but also the fortune of getting my early work accepted when it could’ve just easily been shot down. But I also say this from a place of working really really hard. And I don’t mean the mechanics of it, of collecting and cleaning data, or of running regressions, or of rewriting hundreds of times, of updating my thinking and conceptualization. I mean the inner work--of finding comfort in discomfort and in creative destruction (i.e., being willing to throw out old ideas that are not working and implement new changes through the process), of putting myself out there—even if it means harsh rejections, of getting personal and distraught when I (or the paper, since I’m told your research is not YOU) am rejected, but then getting back up on my feet to work through the clarity of what needs to be done next. I also say this from a place of managing with care and kindness your co-author and advisor relationships. People before projects. Always. This is a valuable life lesson for me. And I appreciate my co-authors for their patience and encouragement throughout—now that I am an advisor and working with students, I realize how much work it takes even to review the findings and come back to the drawing board several times! I am grateful to them for navigating a messy multi-journal multi-year review process with me. Importantly, I am thankful that this is one of those cases where the paper improved through the review process. The editor, AE, and the reviewers pushed us on the right elements. This is not something I take lightly, having been through brutal and unfair review processes a fair amount. A key lesson I learned with this paper was to evolve with the review process. In the early revisions, we expanded from one failure event to two even though getting the additional data was hard. In the second experience, we dived much deeper into the consumer search process and underlying explanations. The paper is completely different from where it started—and much richer. I always give the example from this paper to students how I have a running document with 125+ figures to explore and visualize the data to fully understand the robust patterns. Even if only 10 make it to the final paper, it’s worth the groundwork. You need the groundwork. So why am I both emotional and numb at the same time now that it’s done? Because by the time projects reach the closure they deserve (which in many cases, they may not at all), it’s natural for a part of your starry-eyed dream, especially if it was your dissertation, job market paper, and one of the first few projects of your life, to die a little. The grit lies in not letting them die. The grit is in getting as excited about the work today as you were when you started. Like I always say, fortunately, I chose topics I truly cared about and was interested in. How miserable would this journey have been otherwise!? Rough timelines across journals from memory of this paper for a “curious” reader Summer 2018 - First submission Fall 2018 – Reject and resubmit Summer 2019 – Second submission (revision) Fall 2019 – Major revision Spring 2020 – Third submission (revision) Fall 2020 – Reject Summer 2021 - First submission Fall 2021 – Received Major revision Fall 2022 – Second submission (revision) Spring 2023 – Rejected Fall 2023 - First submission Fall 2023 – Risky revision Summer 2024 - Second submission (revision) Summer 2024 – Revision Fall 2024 – Third submission Fall 2024 – Conditional accept Spring 2024 – Unconditional accept Examples of key review concerns through the various journals and how the paper evolved:
All in all, it is a completely different (and in my biased view, much stronger paper) in 2025. The JMR review team was phenomenal in guiding us and focusing our attention on the most interesting aspects of the paper.
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