Amna Kirmani to Lead Association for Consumer Research

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Amna Kirmani, professor of marketing for the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, has been elected to serve as president the Association of Consumer Research, effective Jan. 1, 2014.

Kirmani, director of Smith’s PhD Programs, will guide the 1,700-member association and its mission to advance consumer research and facilitate the exchange of scholarly information among members of academia, industry and government worldwide.

“This is a highly visible position which is a fitting recognition of Amna's contribution to the field of consumer behavior research,” said P.K. Kannan, the Smith School’s Ralph J. Tyser Professor of Marketing Science and department chair for marketing.

Kirmani earned the 2012 Article of the Year Award from the American Marketing Association TechSIG for "Multi-Format Digital Products: How Design Attributes Interact with Usage Situations to Determine Choice." Kannan and then-Smith PhD student Nevena Koukova co-authored the paper published by the Journal of Marketing Research, for which Kirmani serves on the editorial board.

She also is an associate editor for the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Consumer Psychology and serves on the editorial board of Journal of Consumer Research, which named her “Outstanding Reviewer” in 2012.

Those journals, among others, have published her investigations into consumers' inferences of product quality from marketing signals, consumers' use of persuasion knowledge and brand dilution.

Kirmani’s work also has won the Paul Green Award (Journal of Marketing Research), the Maynard Award (Journal of Marketing), and Best Paper Award (Journal of Advertising).

Joining Smith’s marketing faculty in 2006, she teaches global marketing to MBAs and consumer behavior to PhDs.