Preface to “The chilling effects of network externalities"

Academic journals in marketing should publish more truly controversial papers, i.e., papers that challenge conventional wisdom. The paper co-authored by Goldenberg, Libai, and Muller (2009a) challenges that network effects drive market growth. The paper is among the first in the literature to try to separate the word-of-mouth process from network effects in the diffusion of new products. Moreover, it uses a novel methodology, cellular automata, introduced by the same authors in the marketing literature (also see, Goldenberg, Libai, & Muller, 2002). The intersection of challenging conventional wisdom, being among the first to separate two important processes previously thought of as inseparable, and the usage of a novel methodology can be hard to accept for scholars who seek conclusive results andwho are more comfortable with careful but modest extensions of existing paradigms. Still, scientific advance hinges at least as much on the publication of interesting and novel ideas, even if they lack conclusiveness, as on the publication of studies that fine-tune and perfect previously introduced ideas or that identify limitations or errors in previously reported findings. However, in most, if not all, academic journals the latter two types of articles far outnumber the former type. The International Journal of Research in Marketing aims to be a journal at the forefront of academic knowledge on marketing research. Therefore, it hopes to also publish controversial papers, and on occasion supplement them with commentaries of other experts in the field of inquiry to offer readers the full scope of opinions on the areas of controversy. In that spirit, we are happy to publish the paper by Goldenberg et al. (2009a), and commentaries on it by Gatignon (2009), Tellis (2009) and Rust (2009), followed by a rejoinder of Goldenberg, Libai, and Muller (2009b).