jams-theory-development

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# Theory Development (jams-theory-development)

## When to trigger

- The question is set but the conceptual framework that generates the hypotheses is thin
- Reviewers will ask "what is the mechanism?" and "why these moderators?"
- You have a strong empirical pattern but no organizing marketing theory
- You are tempted to bolt a generic psychological or economic theory onto a marketing finding

## JAMS's theory bar: a framework that does work

JAMS papers are expected to **develop theory**, not merely apply it. The house archetype is the **conceptual framework with a nomological network** — antecedents → focal construct(s) → consequences, with mediators that name the process and moderators that name the contingencies. Marketing reviewers want to see the framework *drawn* (a conceptual model figure) and *defended* construct by construct, each path justified by a stated theoretical logic, not by a citation alone.

JAMS draws on the field's standard theoretical lenses — resource-based view and dynamic capabilities (strategy), relationship-marketing / commitment–trust and transaction-cost / governance (B2B and channels), service-dominant logic and SERVQUAL-tradition gaps models (services), signaling and brand-equity theory (branding), diffusion and the marketing–finance interface (innovation, firm value), and consumer information-processing and self-construal theories (behavior). Pick the lens the phenomenon actually demands and use it to derive predictions, not to decorate them.