Genre-based research has provided valuable insights into the rhetorical structure of research articles in various disciplines. While previous investigations primarily focused on the analyses of individual sections of research articles (e.g., abstracts, introductions, methods, results, and discussions), few

studies have investigated research articles in their entirety. Attempting to fill this gap, this study

examined the complete rhetorical structure of 30 research articles published in three high-impact

marketing journals in 2011. The authors adapted two research instruments after Kanoksilapatham’s

(2005) coding scheme for biochemistry research articles and used the modified scheme to analyze the

corpus of approximately 275,000 words. Findings revealed a total of 9,266 move instances and a

rhetorical structure comprising 17 different categories of rhetorical moves, out of which eight moves

were found to be obligatory, seven moves conventional and two moves optional. Each move type

could be realized by a series of steps ranging from two to seven. The findings regarding the rhetorical

structure of marketing research articles contribute to genre research and provide input for academic

writing courses as well as inform academic writing instructors of the teaching of reading and writing

of research articles.