Wedel, Kannan Receive Marketing Research Award

Research into data analytics by marketing professors Michel Wedel and P.K. Kannan at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business has captured the MSI H. Paul Root Award from the Journal of Marketing editorial review board.

The honor signifies that the Smith professors’ 2016 “Marketing Analytics for Data-Rich Environments” paper (published in the Journal of Marketing) has made “a significant contribution to the advancement of the practice of marketing.”

In a recent American Marketing Association “snapshot” of the study, Wedel and Kannan say their work “describes the history and the state-of-the-art in marketing analytics and provides future research directions in the context of big data for personalization, marketing mix, and privacy and security.” Moreover, they say the scale of research applications necessitated by big data means it’s necessary for both academics and practitioners “to collaborate on such applications to move the field forward and derive business benefits from it.”

The American Marketing Association and Marketing Science Institute co-sponsor this yearly award, named in honor of H. Paul Root, MSI’s president from 1990-1998.

Kannan, the Ralph J. Tyser Professor of Marketing Science, also won the Root award in 2014 for "The Informational Value of Social Tagging Networks,” (summarized here) co-authored with then-PhD student Hyoryung Nam.

Additionally for Wedel, Distinguished University Professor and PepsiCo Chair in Consumer Science, his 2012 paper co-authored by Rik Pieters and Thales Teixeira, “Emotion-Induced Engagement in Internet Video Advertisements,” was selected by the Journal of Marketing Research as a finalist for the 2017 William F. O’Dell Award recognizing "significant, long-term contribution to marketing theory, methodology and-or practice.”

In another prestigious marketing-research recognition, “The Strategic Role of Exchange Promotions," co-authored by Smith School Assistant Professor of Marketing Bo "Bobby" Zhou, was selected as a finalist for the 2017 John D.C. Little Award, given to the “best marketing paper published in Marketing Science, Management Science, or another INFORMS journal.”