Frank Germann, Peter Ebbes, and Rajdeep Grewal have been selected as the recipients of the annual Sheth Foundation/Journal of Marketing Award for their article “The Chief Marketing Officer Matters!,” which appeared in the May 2015 issue of Journal of Marketing.
The Sheth Foundation/Journal of Marketing Award honors the best article published in the Journal of Marketing that has made long-term contributions to the field of marketing. It was endowed by the Sheth Foundation and is selected by a committee that this year included, Roland T. Rust (chair), Kusum L. Ailawadi, and Ruth N. Bolton.
In announcing their decision, committee members explained, “We are delighted to recognize “The Chief Marketing Officer Matters!” by Frank Germann (University of Notre Dame), Peter Ebbes (HEC), and Rajdeep Grewal (UNC-Chapel Hill) as the winner of the Sheth Foundation/Journal of Marketing Award, which honors the article published in the Journal of Marketing in 2015 that has made the most important long-term contributions to the field of marketing.
The paper is deserving for many reasons. It resolves previously contradictory findings, using rigorous econometric techniques, to show that the presence of a CMO results in improved firm performance. The paper also opens up avenues for future research about the marketing leadership antecedents of business performance. The findings are especially timely when many marketing activities are being assumed by non-marketing parts of the firm. This paper implies that such re-organizing has potentially deleterious effects. Marketing has its role, and the CMO really does matter! This paper also offers important insights to the field regarding the resolution of questions about endogeneity in observational marketing data.
In addition to the winning paper, the four other excellent finalists for the award were as follows:
- Ya You, Gautham G. Vadakkepatt, and Amit M. Joshi, “A Meta-Analysis of Electronic Word-of-Mouth Elasticity“
- Sourindra Banerjee, Jaideep C. Prabhu, and Rajesh K. Chandy, “Indirect Learning: How Emerging-Market Firms Grow in Developed Markets“
- Christian Homburg, Martin Schwemmle, and Christina Kuehnl, “New Product Design: Concept, Measurement, and Consequences”
- Christoph Fuchs, Martin Schreier, and Stijn M.J. Van Osselaer, “The Handmade Effect: What’s Love Got to Do with It?”
The award is presented at the Summer Academic Conference to be held August 21-23, 2020 in San Francisco, CA.