George Mason University
Iowa State University
Texas Tech University
Washington State University
The Stern Award Committee, including Erik Mooi (Chair; University of Melbourne), Steven H. Seggie (ESSEC Business School), and Mrinal Ghosh (University of Arizona), is pleased to announce Brett W. Josephson, Ju-Yeon Lee, Babu John Mariadoss, and Jean L. Johnson as winners of the 2025 Louis W. Stern Award. Their winning article, “Uncle Sam Rising: Performance Implications of Business-to-Government Relationships,” was published in the January 2019 issue of Journal of Marketing.
The committee stated:
This high-quality article has significantly impacted the B2B relationship marketing literature. The authors theoretically and empirically demonstrate that three positive (exploration, endowment, and recovery) and two negative (neglect and betrayal) relationship migration mechanisms capture movement across four different relationship states. They conclude that relationship marketing strategies are state specific, thereby deepening our understanding of the theoretical and practical nuances to relationship marketing strategies.
Honorable Mention
The committee would also like to recognize an Honorable Mention for this year’s award:
“Effects of Contract Ambiguity in Interorganizational Governance,” by Xu (Vivian) Zheng, David A. Griffith, Ling Ge, and Uri Benoliel (Journal of Marketing, July 2020).
About the Stern Award
The Interorganizational SIG (IOSIG) Louis W. Stern Award was established by Louis W. and Rhona L. Stern in 1999 through the American Marketing Association Foundation (AMAF). The award recognizes an outstanding article published in a widely recognized and highly respected refereed journal that has made a significant contribution to the literature on marketing and channels of distribution between three and eight calendar years after publication.
The article will be honored at the 2025 Summer AMA Academic Conference in Chicago, IL.