Smith And Amazon Explore Current and Future Paths in Collaborative Research
Leaders from Amazon Research Initiatives and AWS visited UMD’s Smith School on Nov. 10, 2025, to explore research collaborations. Faculty shared innovative projects in AI, logistics, sustainability, and digital marketing, strengthening Smith’s partnership with Amazon and highlighting opportunities for future funding.
Pioneering Digital Marketing and Strategic Initiatives at Smith
P.K. Kannan, Dean’s Chair in Marketing Science at the Smith School, revolutionized digital marketing research and education. His award-winning work bridges technology and marketing, solving real business problems and shaping innovative programs like the Interdisciplinary Business Honors and Smith Business Leadership Fellows.
Who’s Your Competition?
New research by P.K. Kannan, Dean’s Chair in Marketing Science at the Smith School, and Xian Gu, PhD ’19, applies CSIS to identify hotel competitors. Unlike traditional methods, CSIS efficiently pinpoints top rivals across diverse markets, revealing asymmetric influences, spatial variation, and broader applicability beyond hospitality.
AI for Customer Journeys: A Transformer Approach
AI for Customer Journeys: A Transformer Approach
Zipei Lu and P. K. Kannan, Smith School of Business, University of Maryland
(forthcoming Journal of Marketing Research)
AI for Customer Journeys: A Transformer Approach
Marketing researchers at the Smith School developed a transformer-based AI model that predicts digital customer behavior, personalizes insights, and outperforms traditional methods—advancing real-time marketing analytics and ROI through individualized, multi-touchpoint journey analysis.
Smith School Celebrates Third INFORMS Marketing Science Fellow P. K. Kannan
P. K. Kannan, associate dean and marketing professor at the Smith School, was named a Fellow of the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science, honoring his decades of influential research, mentorship, and service in digital marketing, analytics, and marketing science.
Maryland Lt. Gov. Miller Applauds Smith School’s AI Programs During Visit
The Smith School’s new AI certificate program has drawn over 20,000 global enrollees since May. Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller visited July 1 to highlight its role in Maryland’s AI-driven workforce development.
20 Faculty Teams Awarded Smith Internal Research Grants
The Smith School has awarded 2025 Smith Internal Research Grants to 20 faculty-led teams to support high-impact research in areas including AI, entrepreneurship, labor markets, corporate communication, and online learning, fostering innovation across disciplines.
Identifying Competitors in Geographical Markets Using the CSIS Method
Businesses with physical footprints – hotels, retailers, and restaurants – must identify the competitors that matter most. Traditional approaches using brand tier or proximity often fail in dynamic or asymmetric markets. We introduce the Conditional Sure Independence Screening (CSIS) method to marketing to identify true competitors based on their pricing influence on a focal firm’s demand. CSIS is computationally efficient, robust to spatial mis-specifications, and effective for identifying, asymmetric, even non-local, and segment-specific competition.
Kannan Wins AMA TechSIG Lifetime Achievement Award
The AMA TechSIG honored Smith’s P.K. Kannan with its inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award for his impactful research in marketing technology and innovation. Kannan, an expert in digital marketing and AI, shared the recognition with USC’s Gerard Tellis at the AMA Winter Conference.