Jams Literature Positioning

Literature Positioning (jams-literature-positioning)

When to trigger

• The contribution relative to prior marketing work is fuzzy or overstated
• A reviewer is likely to say "we already knew this" or "this is X in a new setting"
• You are unsure which literature stream owns the conversation you are entering
• The reference list is thin on the substantive canon a JAMS area editor would expect

Find the conversation, then locate the gap

JAMS is broad, so the first positioning move is naming which marketing-science stream the paper joins — strategy/performance, B2B/channels, services, retailing, sales, branding, innovation, marketing–finance, sustainability, or consumer behavior — and reading the gap inside that stream. A contribution that floats above all streams reads as unmoored; a contribution buried in one narrow niche reads as incremental. JAMS wants the paper sitting at a live, consequential edge of an established conversation.

Position on three axes at once:

1. Theoretical gap — what the existing framework cannot explain (a missing mediator, an untested boundary condition, a contradiction between two streams you reconcile).
2. Empirical gap — what has not been measured, identified, or estimated credibly (a construct never validated, an endogeneity never addressed, a relationship never quantified in real units).
3. Managerial gap — a decision the field cannot yet guide. JAMS's positioning is incomplete without this; "managers currently lack a basis for X" is a legitimate, expected gap statement here.

Defend against the two predictable challenges

Prepare a one-sentence answer to each before a reviewer raises it:

• "We already knew this." → What mechanism, reversal, boundary condition, or magnitude is genuinely new that prior work could not have told us?
• "This is just a new context." → What about the theory, mechanism, or managerial implication changes — not merely the industry, country, or platform? A new context is a contribution only when it breaks or bounds an existing relationship.

Cite the right canon

• Cite the foundational and current work in the chosen stream — area editors notice missing pillars and missing recent JAMS/JM/JMR work on the same construct.
• Distinguish your paper from the closest two or three papers explicitly, by name, in a sentence each — not in a vague "prior research" wave.
• Cite across the sibling boundary where relevant (a JCR consumer mechanism, a Marketing Science model) to show command of the field, while keeping the paper's home at JAMS.
• Use APA style (JAMS house style) consistently; reconcile every in-text citation with the reference list.

Build the contribution table reviewers look for

A compact way to make positioning auditable — and a frequent JAMS device — is a contribution/comparison table in the front end: rows are the closest prior papers, columns are the dimensions that matter (construct studied, mechanism, moderators, data/method, managerial outcome), and your paper is the last row showing what it adds. This turns "we extend the literature" into a visible gap. Keep the columns honest; a reviewer who is one of those prior authors will read it.

Positioning by archetype

• Survey/SEM contribution: the gap is often a missing mediator or moderator in an established nomological net, or a validated construct the stream lacked. Position against the canonical model you are extending.
• Secondary-data contribution: the gap is usually credible identification of a relationship the field has only correlated, or a magnitude in firm/market terms never quantified.
• Experimental contribution: the gap is a mechanism that prior work assumed but never tested, or a boundary condition that bounds a known effect.
• Meta-analytic contribution: the gap is resolving inconsistency across a fragmented literature and explaining it with theory-driven moderators — not merely averaging effect sizes.

In every case, end the positioning with the same two sentences you will reuse downstream: the new theoretical understanding, and the new managerial guidance.