Peter C. Verhoef is the recipient of the 2012 Sheth Foundation/Journal of Marketing Award for his article, “Understanding the Effect of Customer Relationship Management Efforts on Customer Retention and Customer Share Development,” which appeared in the October 2003 (Vol. 67, No. 4) issue of the Journal of Marketing (JM). The award is administered through the American Marketing Association Foundation. Nominations for the award were solicited from members of the JM Editorial Review Board, and a committee of former journal editors—Roland T. Rust (chair), Ruth N. Bolton, and David W. Stewart —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 2003 and 2007. 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, the article’s 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.
As a nomination letter noted, Verhoef’s article “constitutes a basis for many papers that have been published after 2003” in the area of CRM. Marketing managers and academics have sought a better understanding of the factors influencing “share of customer” or “share of wallet” over time. However, this research problem has been very difficult to investigate for theoretical and technical reasons. The factors influencing share of customer are different from the factors influencing customer retention but this problem had been given insufficient theoretical attention. The article tackled a topic that is difficult from both a conceptual and empirical perspective, and is an exemplar of well-designed and well-executed empirical research. To quote a nominator, “the paper is highly relevant and frequently used by practitioners,” and “has been written in a style which stimulates practitioners to implement ideas and outcomes.” The committee believed that the significant impact of the article on both scholarly research and marketing practice made it a worthy selection for the Sheth Foundation/Journal of Marketing Award.
The award is presented annually at the American Marketing Association’s Summer Marketing Educators Conference.
Peter C. Verhoef is Professor of Marketing at the Department of Marketing, Faculty of Economics, University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
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