This special issue of Review of Marketing Research is unique in that it contains articles by marketing legends in their own words. Presented in alphabetical order; Richard Bagozzi, Shelby Hunt, Philip Kotler, V Kumar, Naresh K. Malhotra, Kent Monroe, Jagdish M Sheth, Yoram (Jerry) Wind and Gerald Zaltman summarize in their own words not only their research but also the salient aspects of their academic life journeys. In this outstanding collection: VK views his research from a decision-making point of view in terms of decisions marketers make either at the market, brand, firm, store, or the customer level; Kotler describes how he entered the marketing field and shows his contributions in four sections: articles written, books published, students nurtured, and executives consulted and trained; Sheth, described as an accidental marketerA", traces the interesting path he followed as the social scientist interested in buyer behavior who ventured into organizational buyer behaviour; Wind shows how his research has been influenced by the real world challenges facing corporations and organizations, and talks of his search for and use of the latest methodological developments to assure the rigor and validity of the solutions.

This volume provides case studies, analysis and frameworks, reviews key studies and techniques, offers theoretical explanations, identifies unanswered questions and research opportunities, and discusses significant managerial and policy implications as well as incorporating insights from literatures across the disciplines of marketing, management and psychology in an integrative manner. It substantially aids efforts to understand, model, and make predictions about both the firm and the consumer and provide fertile areas for future research. Topics examined in details include: a significant content analysis of publications in all the top marketing journals over an extended period of 25 years revealing the leading authors, institutions and topics; an integrative conceptualization of how firms set and alter strategic goals; the problems that firms confront when introducing an Internet channel; referral equity that captures the net effect of all referrals for a supplier firm in the market; research on the question-behavior effect (QBE), the phenomenon that asking questions influences respondents' behavior; techniques for modelling heterogeneous data in partial least squares (PLS).