Smith School Marketing Professors Win Two Best Article Awards: Roland Rust and Stephen L. Vargo honored at annual American Marketing Association award ceremony

College Park - February 14, 2005 - The University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business marketing department continues to be distinguished for its role in setting leading marketing theory and practices with the announcement of two awards from the American Marketing Association. Roland T. Rust, holder of the David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing, and Stephen L. Vargo, visiting professor of marketing, were both honored with awards at the American Marketing Association 2005 Winter Marketing Educators Conference, on February 1114, in San Antonio, Tex.

Rust won the 2004 Marketing Science Institute/H. Paul Root Award for his article, Return on Marketing: Using Customer Equity to Focus Marketing Strategy, which appeared in the January 2004 (Vol. 68, No. 1) issue of the Journal of Marketing. The article, co-authored by Smith School Ph.D. alumnus Valarie Zeithaml and Katherine Lemon, was chosen by members of the Journal of Marketing Editorial Review Board as the article that made the greatest contribution to the advancement of marketing practice. Rust is one of only three people to have won the award three times.

Stephen L. Vargo was a recipient of the 2004 Harold H. Maynard Award for his article, Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing, co-authored by Robert Lusch, which appeared in the January 2004 (Vol. 68, No. 1) issue of the Journal of Marketing. The article was chosen by members of the Journal of Marketing Editorial Review Board as the article that made the greatest contribution to marketing theory.

Roland and Steves active participation in offering new ideas, theories and practices relevant to the field of marketing have significantly contributed the Smith Schools reputation as a source of thought leadership, said Howard Frank, dean at the Robert H. Smith School of Business. We are pleased to announce that they have been thus recognized for their contributions.

The Journal of Marketing is recognized as the premier, scholarly journal of the marketing discipline that focuses on substantive issues in marketing and marketing management.

About the Robert H. Smith School of Business
The Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland is an internationally recognized leader in management education and research for the digital economy. The school offers cross-functional study options in its six academic departments, which include accounting and information assurance; decision and information technologies; finance; logistics, business, and public policy; management and organization; and marketing. More information about the Robert H. Smith School of Business can be found at http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu.