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Two Wisconsin School of Business Marketing Professors
Receive Major Research Award

November 28, 2007

Jan B. Heide and Kenneth H. Wathne, marketing faculty members at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business, have received a major award from the American Marketing Association Foundation, the 2008 Louis W. Stern Award. It marks the third time that Heide has received the prestigious award. He is the only person to have won the award three times.

The Stern Award recognizes an outstanding article in a widely recognized journal that has made a significant contribution to the literature on marketing and channels distribution. Heide and Wathne received the honor for a much-cited article that appeared in the Journal of Marketing in 2000, “Opportunism in Interfirm Relationships: Forms, Outcomes, and Solutions.”  The judges who made the award praised the originality of the article and its impact on academic literature concerning interorganizational issues.

Heide had received the Stern award twice previously.  He and Aric Rindleisch, also a member of the marketing faculty at the Wisconsin School of Business, were honored in 2004 for an article on transaction cost analysis. Heide also received the award in 2001 for an article on interorganizational governance in marketing channels. Still another faculty member, John Nevin, received the award in 2003 for coauthoring an article on collaborative communication in interfirm relationships.

Michael Knetter, dean of the Wisconsin School of Business, says winning the Stern Award is another indication of the research strength of the school’s marketing faculty,  “Research by our marketing faculty is helping to inform important work in the field. The Stern Award is the latest indication of the high regard in which their work is held. It’s a tremendous personal achievement for Jan Heide to receive this award for a third time in his career.”   

From 1996 to 2006, marketing faculty at the Wisconsin School of Business ranked first in the nation for research productivity in terms of the number of articles published in top-tier journals in their field.