INFORMS Honors Maryland Smith Professor Roland Rust

Roland T. Rust, Distinguished University Professor and David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, has won the 2020 Buck Weaver Award from the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science.

The award recognizes career achievements in marketing science and is bestowed by the industry’s leading organization for quantitative marketing.

“We are so impressed not only with the large and deep body of sustained scholarly work you have produced that combine both rigor and relevance in marketing but also with your pioneering contributions to building services research, mentoring students and faculty, editing journals, and leading departments,” wrote the selection committee to Rust. “Your contributions to practice are equally impressive with fostering interactions with industry, founding of research centers in collaboration with industry, and the practical relevance of your award-winning work in services marketing, return on marketing, return on quality, customer equity, among others.”

A pioneer in the field of service marketing, Rust is founder and executive director of Maryland Smith’s Center for Excellence in Service. He has been recognized previously with numerous lifetime achievement awards and honors, including the American Marketing Association’s Irwin McGraw-Hill Distinguished Marketing Educator Award, the EMAC Distinguished Marketing Scholar Award, Fellow of the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science, and the Paul D. Converse Award.

He has won best article awards from five different journals, served as editor of the Journal of Marketing, founded the annual Frontiers in Service Conference, was founding editor of the Journal of Service Research, and served as editor of the International Journal of Research in Marketing.  He has also consulted with many leading companies worldwide, including such companies as American Airlines, Comcast, Dow Chemical, DuPont, FedEx, Hershey, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft and Procter & Gamble.

Rust will be honored during the June 2020 Marketing Science Virtual Conference, where the award will be announced at the virtual awards banquet.

He joins an elite group of scholars who have won both of INFORMS Society for Marketing Science’s two career achievement awards. Only eight others have been recognized with both honors, including Maryland Smith’s Michel Wedel, who won the Buck Weaver Award in 2019.