  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.
