This year, the Market Research Society (MRS) celebrates 65 years of publishing its journal, the International Journal of Market Research (IJMR), which launched under its current title in January 2000.

Coincidently, this will also mark the final year as a printed publication. In future, it will be available in digital format only. From my perspective, I shall miss the arrival by post six times per year, but I will have more space on my bookshelves in future!

This change underlines how journal publishing has evolved. Digital publishing has provided subscribers with website access to new content as soon as it is published for some years. However, the economics of printed publishing limit the number of papers published in each issue, leading to delays in new content appearing in the print format.

Digital also delivers a more flexible access to content, especially in quickly locating content of particular interest to a subscriber. I doubt if many readers ever read each issue of the printed form from cover-to-cover, apart from topic-related special issues, for example, the recent issue devoted to the Net Promoter Score (Vol 66 No 2-3 March/May 2024 ).

The MRS Council took the decision to launch a journal back in 1958 due to a very pressing need to provide a vehicle for members to learn about, and discuss, advances in market research methodology, as there were no existing journals that met this need. Coverage of methodology mainly consisted of ad-hoc papers in the likes of the journals published by the Royal Statistical Society, although the political polling sector was already served by Public Opinion Quarterly, founded as early as 1937.

The MRS journal was initially titled Commentary and published by MRS, being retitled Journal of the Market Research Society in 1969, becoming JMRS in 1987, and IJMR from 2000. NTC, later rebranded as Warc, became the publisher in 1986 until IJMR moved to Sage Publishing in 2017.

The number of journals that cover topics of interest to market and social researchers has mushroomed over the intervening years, but IJMR remains the only journal focusing on all aspects of market research methodology, and applications, there being a subtle distinction between ‘market research’ – traditionally focused on researching consumers – and ‘marketing research’ – covering the much wider field of research applied to all facets of the marketing process.

While early issues may seem rather eclectic in content, the format gradually became more disciplined, adopting the standard academic journal model where submitted papers are refereed by two or more specialists in the particular field, leading to either rejection (often because the topic does not fit with IJMR, or a lack of credible evidence to support the case being made) or recommendations to develop the submission before publication . This provides an assurance of quality. In particular, the journal has always sought to create a dialogue between academics and practitioners, as reflected in the background of the editorial board membership, who undertake the majority of paper reviews.

Topics covered over the history of the journal are therefore very wide-ranging. Political opinion polling is one field of research that has been widely covered over the years, with papers written by leading psephologists such as David Butler, Ivor Crewe, Peter Kellner and Sir John Curtice. The latest issue is a special issue focusing on political marketing, continuing this association.

MRS awards the Silver Medal each year for the best paper, judged by the MRS Awards Panel – an award that stretches back over decades. For much of my editorship there was also an annual Collaborative Award to encourage submissions authored by partnerships of academic and practitioner authors. There was also a Young Researcher Writer’s Award, to encourage younger practitioners to submit papers, which produced some highly creative submissions.

Other activities under the IJMR brand in that era included a Research Methods Forum conference, that ran annually for five years; sponsorship of method related sessions at the main annual MRS conference; annual, or bi-annual IJMR lectures that still continue.

The journal has also been associated with international conferences in India and the US, with selected content published from those events, underlining the ‘international’ connection. To celebrate the 50^th anniversary of MRS in 1996, JMRS produced two special issues containing 28 selected milestones in market research papers either published in earlier issues of the journal or presented at MRS annual conferences.

So, in this 65^th year of the MRS journal, there is a lot to celebrate! The full story of how the MRS journal has contributed to the history of market and social research is contained in an IJMR paper referenced below.

These are sources of more information on IJMR, and its predecessor titles:

• Back issues from 1991 onwards can be found on the Sage website  
• Earlier issues of the journal can be found on the Archive of Market and Social Research (AMSR)
• An introduction to the journals 1959-1990 on the AMSR site
• A paper published in a special issue of IJMR focussing on Market Research History, titled ‘How MRS’ Journal has Contributed to the Development of Market and Social Research’, Mouncey, P. IJMR Vol. 64 No. 2 March 2022, accessible on the AMSR site

• IJMR editor blogs 2013-2019 within the AMSR collection