The American Marketing Association (AMA) and the American Marketing Association Foundation (AMAF) are thrilled to announce Katherine White as the winner of the 2024 William L. Wilkie “Marketing for a Better World” Award.
Katherine (Kate) White is the Senior Associate Dean and Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia. She is a research leader in societal issues, especially those related to prosocial marketing and sustainability. Kate has contributed over 50 peer-reviewed publications, with an h-index of 42, indicating her high impact on the development of this area. For example, her 2019 Journal of Marketing article, “How to SHIFT Consumer Behaviors to be more Sustainable: A Literature Review and Guiding Framework,” has already has been cited over 1,200 times, and is the single most viewed and downloaded article from all Sage management journals in the last 30 years. A summary of this research for practitioners, “The Elusive Green Consumer,” published in Harvard Business Review, has also been impactful (339 citations to date).
Kate has also published pioneering experimental work in Journal of Marketing Research (recycling and composting) and Journal of Marketing (grasscyling and composting) in which measures were obtained through actual garbage pickup. Manipulations in each of these manuscripts were conducted through a communication effort by the city, which both enhanced face validity and disseminated research into practice. Professor White is a leader in this stream of research focused on social good contexts, and her work has created space in the discipline for substantial theoretical contributions coupled with real-world applications.
Through her role as Academic Chair of the Peter P. Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics, she has been instrumental in fostering collaboration and dialogue between academia, industry, and government, and bridging the gap between research and practice. And, in addition to her academic editorial roles and visiting faculty positions globally, Professor White has educated and inspired many students to use their research to shape a better world and has worked to facilitate opportunities for research in this domain. In 2014, Kate cofounded the Decision Insights for Business and Society (DIBS) research group, through which she has conducted many “behavior change for good” research projects with local government agencies and trained government and industry workers in the Behavioural Insights certificate program that she co-created. She has also created and organized the bi-annual Behavioural Insights into Business for Social Good (BIBSG) conference, the fourth instance of which will occur in 2024, bringing together academics and industry working on research for social good.
Most recently, Professor White has become the first Senior Associate Dean of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Sustainability at the UBC Sauder School of Business. Her nominators documented at some length Kate’s work on improving the well-being and sense of inclusion of all underrepresented communities, including a specific focus on Indigenous communities—a particularly important topic in British Columbia.
“I’m extremely pleased that the committee selected Katherine White as the 2024 winner of this award,” Wilkie says. “I have marveled at the broad range of the field that she has taken on with incisive research aimed at shaping marketing thought and practice toward expanding positive marketing impacts on our world. Congratulations to this fine marketing scholar. I’m really looking forward to her speech at the upcoming Winter Educator’s Conference.”
I think that now, more than ever, marketing academics are asking thoughtful questions with practical relevance and the potential to have real societal impact. I enjoy the challenge of thinking about how we can apply theory in creative ways that can impact actual business practice and public policy. I am deeply appreciative and humbled to receive this award, particularly in association with the path-breaking work that Bill Wilkie has done in this domain.
Katherine White, 2024 William L. Wilkie “Marketing for a Better World” Award Recipient
About the Wilkie Award
The William L. Wilkie “Marketing for a Better World” Award honors thinkers who have significantly contributed to our understanding and appreciation for marketing’s potential to improve our world and from whose work notable advances have ensued – in the mold of Bill Wilkie of the University of Notre Dame. For more information about the William L. Wilkie “Marketing for a Better World” Award, visit ama.marketing/WilkieAward.
About the American Marketing Association (AMA)
As the largest professional marketing association in the world, the AMA is trusted by marketing and sales professionals to help them discover what’s coming next in the industry. The AMA has a community of local chapters in more than 70 cities and 350 college campuses throughout North America. The AMA is home to award-winning content, PCM® professional certification, premiere academic journals, and industry-leading training events and conferences. For more information about the AMA, visit www.ama.org.