Marketing Science Institute Taps Robert H. Smith School of Business for Promising Young Scholar

College Park, Md. January 8, 2007 - Rebecca Hamilton, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business has been identified by the Marketing Science Institute (MSI) as among a select group of scholars most likely to become the marketing fields next generation of leaders. In that role, Hamilton participated in MSI's fourth, biennial Young Scholars Program, January 4-7, 2007 in Park City, Utah.

Hamilton, whose research focuses on factors that influence the way consumers process information and make decisions, has gained global visibility for her work and has had her research published in theJournal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing Research and Harvard Business Review. At the Young Scholar's Program, Hamilton presented an abstract that summarized her research to date.

The Smith School is renowned for attracting and retaining some of the most prominent researchers in the field of marketing, and the school is building a strong reputation as a source of promising up-and-coming scholars, said Roland Rust, David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing at the University of Marylands Robert H. Smith School of Business. I am pleased to note that the Smith School has four faculty members who have been named MSI Young Scholars in recent years, including Rebecca.

Hamilton teaches courses on consumer behavior to MBA students, undergraduate students, and PhD students at the Smith School. Her professional career was launched at Price Waterhouse in Boston, Massachusetts, where she served as a staff consultant, a senior consultant, and a principal consultant. As a graduate student at MIT she received research grants from MIT's Center for Innovation in Product Development and was selected as an AMA Sheth Doctoral Consortium Fellow in 1999. Hamilton is a member of the Association for Consumer Research and the Society for Judgment and Decision Making.

The Smith Schools marketing department has been recognized for its cutting-edge research on business issues related to the digital economy particularly in areas related to customer equity management and service marketing. The department sponsors the Center for Excellence in Service, the annual AMA Frontiers in Service Conference, and the Journal of Service Research. The editorship of the Journal of Marketing currently is held by a member of the department and Smith Schools marketing faculty has received numerous research honors and awards.