One of the world’s top marketing scholars, Michel Wedel,
joined the Smith School as the Pepsico Chair in Consumer
Research this summer. He is one of the most prolific
researchers in the field, as well as an outstanding teacher.
Marketing department Chair Roland Rust called Wedel the
“unheard of” combination of both “superstar researcher and
superstar teacher.” Wedel teaches an MBA-level marketing
analysis course this fall and mentors Ph.D. students as
co-chair of Smith’s doctoral program. He joins Smith from
the University of Michigan's Stephen M. Ross School of
Business, where he also held a chaired professorship. He
held previous appointments at the University of Groningen
and the Department of Human Nutrition in Zeist in his native
country, the Netherlands. He received his Ph.D. in marketing
from the University of Wageningen, the Netherlands, in 1990.
Wedel has won numerous awards and honors, including the
2004 O’Dell Award from the Journal of Marketing Research
in 1999, and the 2005 Dr. Hendrik Muller Award for
outstanding research in the social and behavioral sciences,
given every two years by the Royal Dutch Academy for the
Sciences.
Wedel’s appointment increases the already considerable
momentum of the marketing department, especially when it is
combined with the concurrent hiring of highly-regarded
associate professor Rebecca K. Ratner and assistant
professor Jie Zhang, and the January hiring of professor
Amna Kirmani.
“The marketing department is moving up by leaps and
bounds, and that attracts the top faculty,” said Howard
Frank, dean of the Robert H. Smith School of Business. “The
addition of world-leading faculty adds to the momentum of
the department as it continues to reinforce its reputation
as a top marketing program.”
Rebecca Ratner, formerly an associate professor at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a highly
respected consumer behavior researcher and teacher whose
research focuses on consumer decision-making and group
influence. In 2003, the Marketing Science Institute selected
Ratner to its Young Scholars program, an honor extended to
only 20 scholars pinpointed as up-and-coming academic
leaders.
Amna Kirmani, formerly of Southern Methodist University,
is an accomplished and award-winning researcher, who will
co-direct the doctoral program with Wedel. Jie Zhang,
formerly of the University of Michigan, is a quantitative
researcher and will teach undergraduate retailing in the
upcoming academic year. —CT |
