JAMS Q & A Marketing-Finance-Accounting Interface

We spoke with the guest editors of the upcoming JAMS Special Issue on Rethinking the Marketing-Finance-Accounting Interface to learn more about why the field is at an important crossroads and where future research can make the greatest impact. In this Q&A, they discuss how the interface has evolved over the past three decades, highlight emerging opportunities, and areas that are underexplored but have high potential. They also share advice for interdisciplinary teams seeking to contribute novel insights to this expanding research area.

Guest Editors:
Ashwin Malshe, University of Texas at San Antonio
Simone Wies, Goethe University Frankfurt
Deepa Chandrasekaran, University of Texas at San Antonio
Sundar Bharadwaj, University of Georgia at Athens 

Read the full Call for Papers: https://link.springer.com/journal/11747/updates/27840876
Submission Window: September 1, 2026 – October 31, 2026

Q1: You describe the field as standing at a crossroads. What do you see as the most pressing limitations of prior research that this special issue hopes to address?

Over the past three decades, the marketing-finance-accounting interface has made significant contributions by demonstrating that marketing is a crucial driver of shareholder value. The exciting part of the field is its continuous evolution with its emerging domains and contexts that merit further research attention. In that sense, the “crossroads” is an opportunity to combine marketing, finance, and accounting insights and methodologies to demonstrate not only that marketing matters for financial performance, but also explain when, why, and through which mechanisms marketing, finance, and accounting interacts. We identify three broad areas that this special issue hopes to address.

First, much of the existing research has implicitly treated marketing as an input and stock market outcomes as the ultimate output. However, we have comparatively less understanding of how financial market signals and pressures may shape marketing strategy, especially in the politically volatile and technologically disruptive times we are living in these days. In practice, CMOs must take into account capital market reactions, analyst forecasts, and investor expectations that may directly affect the firm’s resources. They also have to consider the strategic latitude available to them. This reverse causality offers an important opportunity for future research.

Second, the marketing-finance-accounting interface literature has predominantly examined large publicly traded firms operating in developed equity markets. However, for the last few years, the number of companies raising capital in public markets has been steadily declining. Instead of going to public markets, firms are increasingly raising capital from private equity, private credit, and venture capital. Yet we know very little about how marketing assets such as brand equity and customer satisfaction are valued and priced in private transactions, how marketing enables the financial success of new ventures, and how investor concerns impact the marketing and success of new ventures.

Finally, the measures of “value” used in prior work are largely financial metrics such as stock returns, stock risk, Tobin’s q, etc. However, marketing creates human capital, social capital, environmental value, and cultural capital. These assets may serve as value-relevant mechanisms that drive the financial market outcomes but need to be better understood. Moreover, other stakeholders may care about them, leading to important implications for the firm’s strategy.

Q2: Are there any proposed topic areas that are especially underexplored but high potential? What are they?

We believe that all the areas we have identified in the call for papers are relatively underexplored but possess high potential. In the earlier question, we have discussed some important areas that may have the potential to generate novel insights for the field. Another high potential and novel area is the marketing-finance-accounting interface in the context of individual and retail investors. For instance, individual investors gained substantial significance during the COVID-19 pandemic by trading in so-called “meme stocks.” This genre of stocks has two crucial marketing components: branding and brand communities. Marketing scholars could investigate whether brand love translates into investor loyalty, or whether advertising intensity amplifies or dampens meme-stock volatility. Furthermore, the data availability from social platforms, such as Reddit, TikTok finance, YouTube investing content, and other creator-led communities raise novel research questions related to the creator economy that require attention.

Q3: What advice would you give to authors or interdisciplinary teams considering a submission?

If you are new to the marketing-finance-accounting literature, we encourage you to think expansively about the audience you wish to engage with through this special issue. Rather than positioning finance or accounting simply as background, we encourage research questions that lead to novel insights that neither marketing nor finance nor accounting could have produced alone. For instance, one productive approach may be to identify marketing constructs that theoretically illuminate financial outcomes. Similarly, another approach could be to examine financial mechanisms or theories that can inform us about how marketing strategy should be designed or evaluated.

We also encourage authors to think about construct and context novelty. The CFP conveys openness to new settings such as private markets, nonprofit enterprises, non-U.S. markets, empowered individual investors, etc. and to new constructs around multi-capital value, AI-mediated customer journeys, and stakeholder-oriented outcomes. Papers that bring new measurement approaches or data sources to bear will have a meaningful advantage.

The window for submissions runs from September 1 to October 31, 2026, which provides teams time to develop ambitious projects and big ideas.

Q4: Regarding the 2026 AMS Annual Conference in Savannah, will there be a dedicated session or workshop for authors before the September submission window opens? Can you tell us more about this supporting event?

We plan to have two promotional presentations: One at the Marketing Strategy Meets Wall Street Conference, March 27-28, 2026, in San Antonio, TX 2026 and the second one at the AMS Annual Conference, May 12-14, 2026, in Savannah, GA.