Gary F. Gebhardt, Gregory S. Carpenter, and John F. Sherry Jr. are the recipients of the 2013 Sheth Foundation/Journal of Marketing Award for their article “Creating a Market Orientation: A Longitudinal, Multifirm, Grounded Analysis of Cultural Transformation,” which appeared in the October 2006 (Volume 70, Number 4) issue of the Journal of Marketing (JM). Nominations for the award were solicited from members of the JM Editorial Review Board, and a committee of former journal editors—Ajay Kohli (chair), Ruth N. Bolton, and Roland T. Rust—made the selection. The award is given to honor articles that have made long-term contributions to the discipline of marketing. The award recognizes scholarship based on the benefits of time and hindsight and acknowledges contributions and outcomes made to marketing theory and practice. This year, the committee considered all articles published in JM between 2004 and 2008. The committee also weighed information obtained from nomination letters and citation analyses. The Sheth Foundation/Journal of Marketing Award was established through the generosity of the Sheth Foundation. The criteria for selection include the quality of the article’s contribution to theory and practice, its originality, its technical competence, and its impact on the field of marketing. Articles eligible for the award must have been published between six and ten years previously.

Gebhardt, Carpenter, and Sherry’s article reports an exceptionally thorough qualitative study of how firms become more market oriented. In contrast to much of the literature on market orientation, the article focuses on instituting change in a firm’s market orientation, a topic that is extremely challenging to study. The reported study involved in-depth and longitudinal investigations of firms, including oral histories, reviews of historical documents, and ethnographic fieldwork with focal firms’ employees, customers, channels, suppliers, and consultants. The article offers a novel grounded theory and, as a nominator put it, “… is nothing short of brilliant.” The study is a great example of how rigorous qualitative analysis can illuminate marketing topics of managerial importance. In the Committee’s judgment, the article’s novelty, technical sophistication, and impact made it eminently worthy of the Sheth Foundation/Journal of Marketing Award.

The award is presented annually at the American Marketing Association’s Summer Marketing Educators’ Conference.

• Gary F. Gebhardt is Associate Professor, Department of Marketing, HEC Montréal
• Gregory S. Carpenter is James Farley/Booz Allen Hamilton Professor of Marketing Strategy, Director of the Center for Market Leadership, and Faculty Director, Kellogg Markets and Customers Initiative (KMCI), Northwestern University
• John F. Sherry Jr. is Raymond W. & Kenneth G. Herrick, Professor of Marketing, University of Notre Dame