Professors Neslin and Golder Win Marketing Awards

Scott Neslin and Peter Golder were recognized by the Journal of Marketing for their significant contribution to marketing theory and practice.

Tuck’s marketing group will figure prominently at this year’s Summer Marketing Educator’s Conference, put on every August by the American Marketing Association. It’s the occasion where the Journal of Marketing confers its awards for marketing research, two of which will go to Tuck faculty members.

Scott Neslin, the Albert Wesley Frey Professor of Marketing, will receive the Paul Root Award for his article, “The Impact of Brand Equity on Customer Acquisition, Retention, and Profit Margin.” Peter Golder, Professor of Marketing, will receive the Harold H. Maynard Award for “What Is Quality? An Integrative Framework of Processes and States.” Both papers were published in the July 2012 issue of the Journal of Marketing.

The Root Award is given for a paper that makes a significant contribution to marketing practice. Neslin’s paper met this test because it is the first study to quantify the effect of brand equity on customer lifetime value (CLV). Neslin and co-authors Florian Stahl, Mark Heitman, and Donald Lehman found that brand equity has a “predictable and meaningful impact” on CLV, and thus the two should be managed in a coordinated fashion.

The Maynard Award is given for a significant contribution to marketing theory and thought. Golder and co-authors Debanjan Mitra and Christine Moorman merited this accolade for their original and holistic framework that defines quality, a concept that has proven difficult to measure and track. Their framework separates quality into three boxes: production, experience, and evaluation. In this way, it allows managers to focus on and improve each component separately.

For marketing professor Praveen Kopalle, chair of Tuck’s marketing area, these awards further validate Tuck’s focus on rigor and practical relevance. “If you look at the marketing area as a whole, we all do rigorous research but we are all interested in managerially relevant problems,” he said. “It’s great to see that both these papers squarely fall into the notion that research should impact practice.”