Measuring the disruptiveness of conceptual papers in the field of marketing

Marketing scholars have underscored the importance of conceptual articles in providing theoretical foundations and new perspectives to the field. This paper supports the argument by employing two network-based measures – the number of citations and the disruption score – and comparing them for conceptual and empirical research. With the aid of a large language model, we classify conceptual and empirical articles published in a substantial set of marketing journals. The findings reveal that conceptual research is not only more frequently cited but also has a greater disruptive impact on the field of marketing than empirical research. Our paper contributes to the understanding of how marketing articles advance knowledge through developmental approaches.