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Foundation Announces William L. Wilkie Award

The American Marketing Association Foundation (AMAF) announced the creation of the William L. Wilkie “Marketing for a Better World” Award at the AMA Winter Marketing Educators’ Conference in St. Petersburg, FL during the February 18 conference awards luncheon.

The Wilkie Award will honor marketing thinkers who have significantly contributed to the understanding and appreciation for marketing’s potentials to improve the world, and from whose work notable advances have ensued. The award recognizes and honors the life of William (Bill) Wilkie, the Nathe Professor of Marketing at the Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame. Over twenty marketing thought leaders have generously given to help establish the creation of this award program.

Jerome D. Williams, AMAF Chairperson and Prudential Chair in Business and Research Director of The Center of Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development, Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick said, “The AMAF is extremely honored to support the Wilkie Award. The purpose of this award and what it stands for is the heart of the AMAF mission—to champion the marketing profession by encouraging excellence and investing in marketing that benefits society.”

Professor Wilkie is a Notre Dame Marketing alumnus who has been honored by the American Marketing Association with its highest recognition, the Distinguished Marketing Educator Award, and, in addition, has been recognized with the “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the American Marketing Association’s Special Interest Group on Marketing and Society. At Notre Dame he has received the Special President’s Award, and has been voted the BP Outstanding Teacher Award for the Mendoza College of Business by the graduating senior class.

He has written numerous journal articles, monographs, and books, including a textbook, Consumer Behavior, which has been used in classrooms throughout the world. Professor Wilkie has been named in several studies as a “Thought Leader” in academic Marketing, and is author of an article named as a “Citation Classic in the Social Sciences” by the Institute for Scientific Information. Professor Wilkie has also served as President of the Association for Consumer Research (an international professional group with more than 1,600 members in 30 nations), as an Academic Advisory Board member for the Marketing Science Institute, a member of the Advisory Board for the Applied Economics Research Bulletin, and as a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Journal of Macromarketing, and Journal of Historical Research in Marketing. Dr. Wilkie has also served as an expert witness in a number of legal cases specializing on consumer marketing and advertising issues.

During the awards luncheon, Professor Wilkie explained his rationale for the “Marketing for a Better World” orientation of this new award:

My essential view is that Marketing is a wonderfully complex and important field of study. The aggregate marketing system is a huge and sprawling human institution, embedded in the daily life of its society. It brings dynamism to its society as it strives to grow and create. Marketing monitors the wants and needs of its citizens, and works to deliver satisfactions of these. While Marketing can sometimes overstep bounds in its pursuits, it also can bring wonder to, and real improvements in, peoples’ daily lives. One important goal for our aggregate marketing system, therefore, is that it be both fair and efficient in its operations.

However, amongst the impressive recent scientific advances in academic marketing, we have seen a shift in the perceptions about the field itself – in our quest for increasing rigor in the “A journals,” we are in danger of forgetting that Marketing actually has impacts on the world we live in, and that these impacts themselves are extremely important. I’m hopeful that this will be a major award in our field, targeted to recognizing marketing thought leaders whose work serves to highlight these issues of marketing’s impacts on the world we live in, and thus serving to enhance these impacts in the future.

The Wilkie Award is intended to be a broadly based, major academic recognition for the field, recognizing Marketing thought leaders whose conceptual developments, substantive applications, or empirical studies have served to provide significant bases for improvements in our world. There is a broad range of possible research areas from which the award can possibly spring, including (but not limited to) marketing theory, innovation, macromarketing, marketing and public policy, ethics and social responsibility, social marketing, services marketing, competition, pricing, advertising, marketing and development, transformative consumer research, and marketing and the consumer interest. The nomination period for the inaugural award will open in September of 2012 and additional information can be found at www.themarketingfoundation.org/wilkie.html.

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