Written by Farhana Tabassum, PhD in Marketing, BI Norwegian Business School
This summer I interviewed the founder of IJRM, Berend Wierenga, Professor Emeritus of Marketing at Rotterdam School of Management. As Berend wears a historian’s hat and tells how he crossed paths with marketing, the conversation unfolds interesting behind-the-scenes stories of IJRM’s coming into being.
Turning the pages
How did your journey in marketing take off?
After high school, I went to Wageningen, which at the time was an Agricultural University,to study Economics. It was in 1962, a time when marketing was taking baby steps to become an academic field in Europe.
It was not a coincidence that marketing was associated with the agricultural university. Marketing stemmed from agriculture. Food and agricultural products were the first products that required marketing. Farmers would have to take their produce to the market to sell it.
My favorite saying is: ‘The cradle of marketing stood on the cornfield’. Because I come from a Dutch farming family, I already had a penchant for marketing.
Wageningen offered different master's specializations, of which I chose Marketing in 1965. At the time that I completed my Master's, a professor (Mathieu Meulenberg) was founding a marketing department at Wageningen and asked me to join as a faculty member. So, I did start teaching and started, in parallel, as a PhD candidate as well. I was awarded my PhD degree in 1974.
Which means this year marks the 50th anniversary of your doctorate. Was academia an immediate choice?
We had a mini celebration of my PhD anniversary at Erasmus in May where I am a Professor Emeritus. As a PhD student, my inclination toward data inspired me to take courses in mathematics, statistics, and operations research. My dissertation was on the stochastic brand choice process, which is basically how consumers choose brands. I knew a few colleagues in the US working on the same topic. I sent my dissertation chapters to professors at Columbia, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Wharton. Each of the four places responded positively, and I ended up joining Stanford as a Visiting Scholar for the academic year 1974-1975.
Do you consider yourself a modeler?
The subdomains of marketing were not distinctively identified in our generation. Although my training was in quant, I used to teach consumer behavior and years later, I authored a book on consumer behavior and have published papers in behavioral journals. I would rather not limit my identity to a box labeled modeler.
How did IJRM happen?
I created IJRM. It was from 1979 to 1980 when I was President at EMAC, I thought of doing something new. At that time only JM and JMR existed. I came up with a proposal to create a journal. Together with Phillip Naert, who was a senior marketing scholar, we went to Elsevier to discuss the idea and get a quotation. By 1981 we had an agreement with Elsevier for a journal and were searching for an editor. Upon Philip’s suggestion, I took up the challenge and became the founding editor. Over time, the editorial board was formed. We spent a couple of years collecting papers from authors from Europe and the USA. It was not easy to receive papers back then. I started sending letters to potential authors since there was no email and reaching out to them in person during the EMAC conferences. That’s how I gave the first push, and since then eventually, all the other editors contributed tremendously to the success IJRM has achieved.
What was the editorial work like then vs. now?
The first issue came out in 1984. Getting the early issues out was quite a task, yet we were determined to maintain an absolute high standard and stuck to blind peer-reviewing. During the initial years, the number of papers received used to be low. We would delay some issues despite being pushed by the publisher, simply because we did not have enough good articles.
The scenario changed dramatically. Nowadays IJRM receives over thousand papers every year. A journal that was not known at all flourished to be well-known. What remains constant today is the quest for quality.
There were no ABS rankings as such in the 80s, but that didn’t prevent us from being a competitive player, right from the beginning.
How do you look at the role of an editor in promoting researchers’ works?
The editor works with authors to improve a paper. S/he has to be good at having a hunch about opportunities. Even if a paper doesn’t seem par excellence in terms of studies at the starting point, the editor should be able to evaluate the research idea and make hints and suggestions to help make a great project. At the same time, I believe that editors and reviewers should not play the role of co-producing or co-authoring a paper, so to speak. They should refrain from going too much into steering the direction the way they would like.
You have published papers on movies and games. How did you end up working on those topics?
Personally, I love going to cinemas and watching movies. One interesting thing about the movie industry is the richness and availability of data. One can collect data points on the movie theatres and multiplexes, how many viewing halls they have, how many days the movies were run, how many shows were run, how many viewers watched, etc. Together with my co-authors Josh Eliashberg from Wharton and Charles Weinberg from UBC, I published a paper where we used the motion picture industry data to model what movie should be run at what time and in what room to answer how to maximize the revenue. (We got the 2009 IJRM Best Paper award for this article.) We three worked on scheduling movies in the theatre and are still a team today. Our current work looks into consumers’ appreciation for the same movie running simultaneously in theatres and on streaming platforms.
Any interesting anecdotes regarding your research findings?
We made a recommendation via the LA Times Op-ed that studios should buy movie theatres. The other day my colleague Weinberg came across an article that Sony is going to take over small theatre chains in the US. We cannot prove they read our article, but it was amusing to see at the end that businesses did exactly what we suggested.
Perspectives and preferences
What keeps you still so hands-on with research?
People keep telling me “Hey you are retired, and you should work on your hobbies”, but my hobby happens to be doing research in marketing. In our job, it is easy to remain active as long as we can think, speak, and write. I published two papers this year and am working on a book. Having said that, I do not work every day, maybe three days a week. I am not addicted, but marketing remains a stimulating field to be in.
What is the essence of marketing?
The basic role of marketing is to match what people want and what suppliers offer which is the optimal agreement between demand and supply of goods and services. That’s the key feature and role of marketing in society.
If you were asked to retain one concept from marketing, what would that be?
Brands. They are the crown jewels of marketing. Without brands, you cannot identify yourself in a market and communicate your uniqueness to the customers. The book I am writing is about brands.
What would you be if you were not an academic?
Maybe a farmer, I’m a farmer’s son who went to an agricultural university. Or perhaps a businessman.
Name us some of your favorite movies:
Oppenheimer and Parasite.
You start your morning with:
Reading newspapers.
Who would you like to have lunch with?
Immanuel Kant. Unfortunately, he’s not alive anymore. He has thought very deeply about what we can know. He developed great ideas about how we can deal with reality – I think he is one of the greatest philosophers of all time. I am fascinated by his idea of ‘Das Ding an Sich’ which is what you observe is always interpreted by your senses, the real thing is not really known.
What is your favourite family time activity?
I try to fill my days with interesting activities. When my wife and I have grandchildren around, we make trips to the canals with our canoe.
Your message to the outgoing and incoming IJRM editorial teams.
I thank the outgoing team for all their good work. IJRM is already recognized for sustaining its high quality, but in the long run, I think we have to give IJRM an even stronger identity. IJRM should be the authors’ first choice for certain topics, cultural differences, luxury marketing, marketing and society, for instance. Europe boasts housing a plethora of cultures and lifestyles and IJRM should take advantage of it by publishing top-notch research in these areas. I am optimistic that the new team will live up to IJRM’s expectations.
This article was written by
Farhana Tabassum
PhD in Marketing
BI Norwegian Business School
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