n order for a paper to be published in the Journal of Marketing it must meet three minimum criteria:

1. Make a contribution to the science and practice of marketing.

2. Be based on sound evidence--literature review, theory and/or empirical research.
   

3. Be valuable to marketing academicians and/or practitioners.

If you submit your review by email, please be sure it includes the following information:

1. The Manuscript Number, your name and your Reviewer Number

2. Ratings of the manuscript on each of the evaluative criteria listed on the Review Form.

3. Written comments.

We will acknowledge receipt of your review as soon as we verify that we can accurately decode it.

The following format is suggested for preparing comments for the author(s):

1) Identification of the contribution and major strengths of the paper. Is this paper appropriate for JM? What is the incremental contribution to existing marketing science and practice? What are the strengths of the paper? If, in your assessment, the paper does not make a contribution or have any strengths, a politely worded opening paragraph summarizing the essence of the paper would be appropriate.

2) Major weaknesses of the paper. The following are some questions you should try to address:

a) Does the manuscript provide sufficient information to make an evaluation? If not, what information is needed? Be specific.

b) Does the manuscript have mistakes? If so, are they correctable? How? Would removing problematic sections be a solution? If the mistake is not correctable, please state why.

c) Do the authors achieve their stated objectives? If not, what do they still need to do?

d) What are the major changes that should be made and/or major issues that should be addressed in a revision.

3) Other changes that would potentially strengthen the manuscript and/or minor issues that should be addressed in a revision. When discussing minor issues, it is usually helpful to indicate the place in the manuscript (page and paragraph) where the change should be made.

4) Readability. Some questions you might consider:

a) Is the length to contribution ratio appropriate? A "desirable" length is 25 pages of text, excluding tables and figures.

b) Are there sections of the manuscript that can be eliminated or condensed? Are there sections of the manuscript that might be moved to a technical appendix?

c) Will the paper be interesting to both academicians and practitioners? If not, how can it be strengthened? Do you see managerial implications that the authors have overlooked, or failed to treat in sufficient depth?

5) Abstract and Title. Comments and suggestions, if any, regarding the abstract (whether it is an accurate and useful summary of the content of the paper), and title (whether it is appropriate given the content of the paper).

You may write a separate note to the editor if you think it necessary to alert the editor to issues that would be inappropriate, in your opinion, to include in the Comments to the Author(s).

There is no need to return the manuscript, unless you have comments on the margin of the text pages, figures or tables that you would like the JM editorial office to forward to the authors.