The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business is launching a nine-month, fully online certificate program designed for technical and non-technical professionals interested in leveraging data to draw insights and drive smarter decision-making for their organization.

New research from Maryland Smith’s P.K. Kannan shows how a firm’s social media posts have big impacts on its stock price, both temporarily and permanently.

Despite booming business, Facebook’s reputation has been in decline – from 2018’s Cambridge Analytica scandal  through recent revelations of the platform’s role in 2020 election misinformation and Instagram’s negative effect on teens.

Pushback from advertisers against Google’s plans to phase out third-party cookies in its Chrome browser has forced the company to postpone to 2023. It’s a move set to shake up the recipe for online advertising and Maryland Smith’s P.K. Kannan says it will be felt by advertisers, consumers and Google alike.

The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business has recently established a partnership with Ashesi University, a private university in Accra, Ghana. This partnership will first involve a yearlong faculty development program, focused on enhancing Ashesi’s scholarship of teaching and learning. The initiative also taps Maryland Smith faculty in the top 2% of the most-cited scholars and scientists worldwide and ranked No. 16 in the University of Texas at Dallas’ Top Worldwide Business School Rankings.

Ford set its sights on overtaking Tesla in the electric car market when it announced in May its competitive $40,000 price point for the new F-150 Lightning electric pickup. Scanning consumer sentiment and determining whether it succeeded in winning over popular opinion is typically a difficult process. But new research from Maryland Smith found a way.

If there’s one thing that can be said about Scarlett Johansson’s decision to sue Disney for releasing her latest film, “Black Widow,” simultaneously on streaming and in movie theaters, perhaps it’s this: Watch for sequels. And as the industry enters its new era, watch for spinoff effects, too, as movie marketing evolves, says P.K. Kannan, the Dean’s Chair in Marketing Science at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST – This week’s seventh iteration of Amazon Prime Day reportedly generated more than 250 million item purchases across 20 countries. This included more than $1.9 billion in third-party sales, including through the event’s two-week lead-up, by mostly small and medium-size businesses.

What’s the right look for returning to the workplace? Professional or casual? The answer is both, according to Maryland Smith’s Jie Zhang and P.K. Kannan. In an interview with the Baltimore Sun, Zhang and Kannan discussed the evolution of work attire after 15 months of many professionals working from home and weighed in on the ongoing debate on what to wear to the office.

P. K. Kannan, the Dean’s Chair in Marketing Science at Maryland Smith, has been inducted as a fellow of the European Marketing Academy (EMAC), a recognition of outstanding contributions to the scholarship and practice of marketing and contributions to EMAC.