Strategic Marketing for the Digital Economy

"Strategic marketing for the digital economy" characterizes the approach of the marketing faculty at the Smith School of Business, which has been recognized for its cutting-edge research on some of the most compelling business issues in the digital economy, with special emphasis on service, high tech and B2B marketing. Smith’s marketing professors also possess special expertise in the areas of customer equity, relationship building in online and offline environments, consumer behavior, marketing channels, and pricing of information products. Their scholarship informs the academic programs offered by the department. As a result, Smith School marketing graduates combine a mastery of the traditional foundations of marketing with the ability to use data analysis to drive strategic decision making.

The full-service marketing department emphasizes the Smith School’s strategic focus on information technology and world-class research. The department offers an active Ph.D. program, plus extensive course offerings at the MBA and undergraduate levels. The MBA program in marketing has been named one of the nation's top 13 programs. Combining faculty expertise in service with the Smith School’s focus on information technology, the Marketing Department has carved a unique niche as a world leader department in customer equity management and e-service. Supporting the department’s customer focus, the department sponsors the Center for Excellence in Service, the Center for Complexity in Business, the annual AMA Frontiers in Services Conference, the Journal of Service Research, and the first MBA course in e-service. In addition the editorship of the Journal of Marketing  was recently held by a member of the department. Maryland’s world-class faculty has received many important research honors and awards, some of which are listed below.

Recent Department Awards and Honors  

Wendy Moe has won the 2010 AMA Erin Anderson Award for an Emerging Female Marketing Scholar and Mentor. The award, instituted in honor of Professor Erin Anderson (INSEAD), is given annually at the AMA Winter Educators’ Conference to a female marketing professor who has made significant research contributions in terms of publications in leading journals, and working papers under review. The recipient should also have made teaching and service contributions to her department.

Rosellina Ferraro received an Honorable Mention for the 2009 Ferber Award for her paper "The Power of Strangers: The Effect of Incidental Consumer-Brand Encounters on Brand Choice," with James R. Bettman, and Tanya L. Chartrand.  The Robert Ferber Award competition is held annually in honor of one of the founders and the second editor of the Journal of Consumer Research. The award is given to the best interdisciplinary dissertation article published in the latest volume of JCR. 

Jie Zhang and Michel Wedel's paper “The Effectiveness of Customized Promotions in Online and Offline Stores” (Journal of Marketing Research April 2009), was a finalist for the Paul Green Award for the article published in 2009 with the most potential to contribute significantly to the practice of marketing research

Roland Rust and Rebecca Hamilton's paper "Feature Fatigue: When Product Capabilities Become Too Much of a Good Thing," (2005) was a finalist for The O'Dell Award.   This award is given five years after publication to the paper published in the Journal of Marketing Research that has "made the most significant, long-term contribution to marketing theory, methodology, and/or practice." 

Roland Rust won the 2010 Sheth Foundation/Journal of Marketing Award for the JM article with the greatest long-term impact for his article "Return on Marketing: Using Customer Equity to Focus Marketing Strategy" (with Kay Lemon and Valarie Zeithaml).

Michael Trusov's article “Effects of Word-of-Mouth Versus Traditional Marketing: Findings from an Internet Social Networking Site” (with Randolph E. Bucklin, & Koen Pauwels) (September 2009) was the runner-up for the 2010 Marketing Science Institute/H. Paul Root Award. This same paper was also a finalist for the 2009 Harold H. Maynard Award.

P.K. Kannan won the Donald R. Lehmann Award, 2009, (co-author and dissertation chair), awarded by the American Marketing Association Marketing Research SIG for the Best Dissertation-Based Research Article in JMR or JM for the April 2008 Journal of Marketing Research article, "Incorporating Subjective Characteristics in Product Design and Evaluations," (with Lan Luo and Brian Ratchford). Kannan's co-authors were Lan Luo, a former PhD student at Smith, and Brian Ratchford, a former Marketing faculty member at Smith.

P.K. Kannan won the John D.C. Little Award for co-authoring the paper "New Product Development Under Channel Acceptance", Marketing Science, Lead Article, Vol. 26, No. 2, p. 149-163. This prestigious award is given annually for the best paper published in either the Marketing Science or Management Science journals and is named after John D.C. Little, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management who is widely recognized as a founder of marketing science. The John D.C. Little Award is the highest honor given by the College on Marketing of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).

Michel Wedel won the Gilbert A. Churchill Award for lifetime achievement in the academic study of Marketing Research. This award is given by the Marketing Research Special Interests Group of the American Marketing Association.

Roland Rust was named a Distinguished University Professor. He is the only Smith School professor ever to achieve that recognition at the University of Maryland.

P.K. Kannan and his co-authors, Barbara Kline Pope and Sanjay Jain, won the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science Practice Prize for their work "Pricing Digital Products: A Model and Application for National Academy Press."

Roland Rust won the Best Article Award from the Journal of Service Research for his article, "The Path to Customer Centricity" (with Denish Shah, A. Parasuraman, George Day and Rick Staelin).