Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Marketing research involving individuals through surveys, interviews, experiments, focus groups, consumer panels, observations, behavioral tracking, neuromarketing methods, customer data, identifiable records, or other human-participant methods must comply with applicable institutional, national, and professional ethical requirements.

• The approving ethics committee or institutional review board must be identified where approval is required.
• The ethics approval/reference number should be reported where applicable.
• Authors must explain how informed consent was obtained where required.
• An approved waiver of consent must be disclosed and justified.
• Participant privacy, autonomy, confidentiality, and dignity must be protected.
• Consent for publication is required where participants may reasonably be identified.
• Additional safeguards must be reported when children, vulnerable consumers, economically disadvantaged populations, or other vulnerable participants are involved.

Marketing research may involve customer records, transaction data, CRM databases, loyalty-program information, advertising metrics, digital-platform analytics, social-media data, web behavior, geolocation information, market-research panels, proprietary commercial datasets, or other sensitive business and consumer information.

• Authors must have lawful and authorized access to all consumer, organizational, platform, and commercial data used.
• Personally identifiable or sensitive information must be anonymized, aggregated, or de-identified where appropriate.
• Consumer, customer, employee, client, partner, and organizational confidentiality must be protected.
• Platform terms, data-protection requirements, contractual conditions, and third-party restrictions must be followed.
• Authors must not disclose protected customer information, commercial secrets, proprietary analytics, or identifiable behavioral data without authorization.
• Restrictions affecting data sharing must be stated transparently in the Data Availability Statement.

Authors must report research methods and analytical procedures with sufficient clarity to permit scientific evaluation and, where possible, replication.

• Research design and methodological approach must be clearly identified.
• Population, sample, consumers, customers, organizations, brands, markets, campaigns, cases, or data sources must be explained.
• Sampling and participant-selection procedures must be transparent.
• Measurement instruments, scales, constructs, indicators, and variable definitions must be stated.
• Statistical, econometric, experimental, qualitative, behavioral, digital-analytics, computational, or mixed-method procedures must be described.
• Assumptions, exclusions, transformations, manipulation checks, robustness tests, model specifications, and analytical decisions should be reported where relevant.
• Experimental marketing studies should explain randomization, treatment conditions, controls, stimuli, and manipulation procedures where applicable.
• Systematic reviews should follow an appropriate reporting framework such as PRISMA where applicable.

Editors are responsible for maintaining a fair, confidential, independent, and evidence-based editorial process.

• Base decisions on scholarly quality, originality, methodology, relevance, and ethical compliance.
• Apply journal policies consistently and without inappropriate discrimination.
• Maintain confidentiality of manuscripts, reviewer reports, author responses, and editorial records.
• Protect reviewer identities under the journal's double-blind model.
• Declare conflicts of interest and recuse themselves when impartiality may be compromised.
• Select reviewers with appropriate marketing, consumer-behavior, strategic, digital, quantitative, qualitative, and methodological expertise.
• Prevent coercive citation, authorship manipulation, peer-review manipulation, and inappropriate editorial influence.
• Address complaints, appeals, and integrity concerns fairly.
• Take proportionate corrective action when the scholarly record is unreliable.
• Ensure that APC payment or waiver status does not influence editorial decisions.

• Provide objective, constructive, respectful, independent, and timely assessments.
• Accept assignments only when appropriate expertise and sufficient time are available.
• Treat manuscripts, consumer data, commercial information, supplementary files, and correspondence as confidential.
• Disclose financial, professional, institutional, collaborative, academic, commercial, or personal conflicts.
• Decline reviews where impartiality may reasonably be compromised.
• Report suspected plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, data manipulation, or other misconduct confidentially to the editor.
• Avoid personal criticism, hostile language, unsupported allegations, and discriminatory comments.
• Recommend citations only when genuinely relevant to the manuscript.
• Never use unpublished marketing strategies, datasets, findings, or commercially sensitive information for personal or professional advantage.
• Do not upload confidential manuscripts or unpublished data to public generative AI systems.

• Submit original work that has not been formally published and is not under review elsewhere.
• Report methods, analyses, findings, limitations, and conclusions honestly and accurately.
• Retain supporting survey data, experimental records, analytical outputs, interview materials, coding files, or digital-marketing data where appropriate.
• Provide accurate citations and verifiable references.
• Obtain required ethics approvals, informed consent, organizational permissions, platform authorization, and data-use permission.
• Disclose funding sources and the role of funders.
• Disclose actual or potential conflicts of interest, including commercial and brand-related interests.
• Ensure all listed authors qualify for authorship.
• Obtain approval from all authors for the submitted version and author order.
• Disclose relevant use of generative AI.
• Notify the journal promptly if a significant error or ethical problem is discovered.

Authorship must reflect substantial scholarly contribution and accountability. The journal applies the four authorship criteria recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

1. Substantial contribution to the conception/design or acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data;
2. Drafting or critical intellectual review of the manuscript;
3. Final approval of the version to be published; and
4. Agreement to be accountable for the accuracy and integrity of the work.

• Author contributions should be described using appropriate CRediT roles.
• Research assistants, data analysts, market-research personnel, fieldworkers, technical staff, or other contributors who do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged appropriately and with permission.
• Authorship changes require written justification and agreement from all affected authors.
• Artificial intelligence tools cannot qualify as authors.

Authors, reviewers, editors, and Editorial Board members must disclose relationships that may influence, or reasonably appear to influence, their judgment.

Authors must identify funding sources, grant numbers where applicable, and the role of funders, sponsors, companies, brands, agencies, or other partners in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, and publication decisions.

• A Data Availability Statement must be included in research manuscripts.
• Data repositories, persistent identifiers, access conditions, or restrictions should be reported.
• De-identified consumer data, survey instruments, analytical code, experimental materials, coding schemes, or supplementary material should be shared where ethically, legally, and commercially possible.
• Restrictions arising from consumer privacy, commercial confidentiality, platform terms, contracts, proprietary datasets, or third-party ownership must be explained.
• Fabrication, concealed deletion, inappropriate alteration, selective exclusion, manipulated analytics, or misleading presentation of data is prohibited.
• The Editorial Team may request underlying data, survey records, analytical files, experimental documentation, or other supporting evidence when necessary to evaluate research integrity.

All manuscripts may be screened using Turnitin. The journal normally requires an overall similarity index below 20%, subject to editorial assessment of the nature and location of the matching material.

Unattributed copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, translation plagiarism, mosaic plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and undisclosed reuse of previously published material are prohibited.

• AI must not replace human scholarly judgment or authorship responsibility.
• Meaningful AI-assisted activity must be disclosed according to journal policy.
• Authors remain fully responsible for accuracy, originality, references, analyses, interpretations, and conclusions.
• AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.
• AI-generated references, consumer insights, datasets, coding, analyses, summaries, or interpretations must be independently verified.
• Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts, unpublished commercial data, or identifiable consumer information to public generative AI systems.
• AI-assisted material must be checked for fabricated citations, factual errors, bias, misleading consumer claims, inaccurate market information, and scientifically invalid conclusions.

Eligible manuscripts undergo double-blind peer review by at least two independent reviewers.

• Reviewer selection is based on marketing, consumer-behavior, branding, digital marketing, strategic marketing, retailing, services, analytics, and methodological expertise.
• Authors and reviewers remain anonymous to one another during review.
• Reviewer recommendations inform, but do not determine, the final editorial decision.
• Conflicting reviewer recommendations may result in additional review.
• Editors who are authors or have conflicts must not participate in handling the manuscript.
• Acceptance or rejection is based on scholarly merit rather than financial, brand, sponsorship, or commercial considerations.

The journal does not tolerate conduct that undermines the reliability, transparency, fairness, consumer protection, or integrity of scholarly publishing.

Credible concerns are evaluated fairly, confidentially, consistently, and without presuming misconduct before relevant evidence has been assessed.

1. Initial assessment: determine whether the concern is specific, credible, relevant, and within the journal's responsibility.
2. Clarification: request explanations, original data, survey records, experimental documentation, customer datasets, analytical files, or supporting evidence where necessary.
3. Independent advice: seek marketing, consumer-behavior, methodological, statistical, ethical, data-protection, or legal expertise where appropriate.
4. Institutional coordination: contact institutions, research-integrity offices, funders, ethics committees, companies, data providers, or other responsible bodies where necessary.
5. Editorial action: take proportionate action according to the evidence and seriousness of the concern.

Formal notices will identify the affected article, explain the reason for the action, remain freely accessible, and be linked permanently to the scholarly record where applicable.

A manuscript is not considered formally withdrawn until the Editorial Office has reviewed the withdrawal request and provided written confirmation. Ethical concerns such as duplicate submission, authorship disputes, suspected plagiarism, fabricated consumer data, falsified survey results, manipulated experiments, or other research misconduct may continue to be investigated even if an author requests withdrawal.

Authors, participants, consumers, institutions, organizations, companies, data providers, and other stakeholders may raise concerns about editorial procedures, reviewer conduct, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, consumer privacy, citation coercion, authorship handling, publication charges, ethical matters, or research-integrity procedures.

An editorial appeal should identify a material factual error, procedural irregularity, substantial misunderstanding, inappropriate application of journal policy, or relevant evidence that was overlooked.

Where independent assessment is necessary, complaints or appeals will be considered by an editor or qualified person who was not materially involved in the original matter.

• Authors must submit original work and respect third-party intellectual-property rights.
• Permission must be obtained for copyrighted third-party material, including advertisements, brand assets, logos, screenshots, campaign materials, photographs, graphics, questionnaires, proprietary scales, or reproduced marketing content where required.
• Authors must respect trademarks, commercial confidentiality, licensing restrictions, proprietary datasets, and other third-party rights.
• Authors retain the full copyright of their work.
• The journal receives a non-exclusive right of first publication.

Manuscripts, reviewer reports, author responses, ethical documents, participant information, consumer data, proprietary commercial information, analytical files, allegations, investigations, and editorial correspondence are treated as confidential.

The journal maintains appropriate editorial records to document manuscript decisions, reviewer activity, revisions, ethical assessments, complaints, appeals, corrections, and integrity investigations in accordance with applicable legal and institutional requirements.