The Winter 2007 edition of the A.C. Nielsen Center's newsletter, Focal Point, is now online!
Read all of the stories at http://www.bus.wisc.edu/nielsencenter/newsletter/fall2007/

The Fall 2007 edition of the A.C. Nielsen Center's newsletter, Focal Point, is now online!
Read all of the stories here.

Praveena Tirumalareddy and Chanchal Tamrakar conducted an economic survey of 544 businesses in Dane County between September and October as part of their PA project with the First Business Bank. The A.C. Nielsen Center sponsored project helped investors and policy makers access the health of Wisconsin businesses.
Their research, and the Center, were mentioned in the Wisconsin State Journal on December 5th. You can read the article online or see the actual survey they used.

Congratulations to alumnus Michal Zarnecki and his wife Kate on the birth of their daughter, Zosia. Zosia was born on October 2, 2007 and weighed 6.7 lbs. Zosia and family are healthy and doing well. Congrats!

We are pleased to announce the following organizational changes for Marketing Sales and Service and Product Engineering effective immediately.

Jill S. Massonne, currently 3000/4000 Program Administrator, has been named Program Administrator, 1000/2000 Series Transmission replacing Thomas D. Eifert. Jill will assume the responsibility of leading a cross-functional team to develop and implement product quality improvements, customer initiatives or product features and ratings including MY10i torque uprate program, and transmission/controller cost reduction initiatives. She will continue to report to the Product Engineering organization.

Jill began her career with GM as a coop student at Bedford Foundry before joining Allison Transmission, Indianapolis, in 1989 as an Associate Quality/Reliability Engineer. Jill has held a variety of assignments of increasing responsibility within Operations, including Associate Reliability Engineer, WT Design Reliability, Quality/Reliability Engineer in Statistical Support, and 3000 Series Quality Manager. Jill has a BS degree in Industrial Engineering from Purdue.

Replacing Jill as 3000/4000 Program Administrator is Chato D. Patterson. Chato's previous assignment was as a Field Sales Account Manager in the Eastern Region. His specific territory was Penn DD-A including Pennsylvania, Upper State New York, and select counties in Delaware. Chato assumes the responsibility for leading a cross-functional product team to develop and implement product quality and transmission/controller cost reduction initiatives.

Chato began his career at Allison as a Tactical Marketing Intern during the summer of 1998. After receiving an undergraduate degree in Marketing from Indiana University - Bloomington in 1999, he was hired into the Marketing Department as a Strategic Market Analyst accountable for the global marketing forecast. From there he moved to the 1000/2000 Series TM Service Department and spent one year as a Service Engineer.

Chato spent two years on Educational Leave and received an MBA in Marketing Research from the University of Wisconsin in 2004. Upon returning to Allison, he re-entered the N.A. Marketing Department and had responsibility for research, pricing, and MSS product line team activities.

Please join us in congratulating Jill and Chato in their new roles. As usual, your cooperation and support for both in their new roles is greatly appreciated.

Laurie B. Tuttle James E. Wanaselja, Director
Director of Engineering North American Marketing, Sales & Service

We are pleased to announce the following organizational changes for Marketing Sales and Service and Product Engineering effective immediately.

Jill S. Massonne, currently 3000/4000 Program Administrator, has been named Program Administrator, 1000/2000 Series Transmission replacing Thomas D. Eifert. Jill will assume the responsibility of leading a cross-functional team to develop and implement product quality improvements, customer initiatives or product features and ratings including MY10i torque uprate program, and transmission/controller cost reduction initiatives. She will continue to report to the Product Engineering organization.

Continue reading "Organizational Announcement - Allison Transmission" »

Cincinnati, OH (August 16, 2007): Former Burke, Inc. Chairman and CEO Ronald L. Tatham is the recipient of the 2007 Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Research Award, which recognizes Tatham's substantial contributions and unwavering dedication to the ongoing advancement of marketing research practice. The Parlin Board of Governors, as an instrument of the American Marketing Association (AMA) and the American Marketing Association Foundation (AMAF), announced the award this week.

The Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Research Award was established in 1945 by the Philadelphia Chapter of the AMA and The Wharton School in association with the Curtis Publishing Company to honor distinguished academics and practitioners who have demonstrated outstanding leadership and sustained impact on the evolving profession of marketing research over an extended period of time. Established as a memorial to Charles Coolidge Parlin, who is recognized as a founder of marketing research, and acknowledged for his early benchmarking studies of consumer issues, the Parlin Award is today a preeminent national honor.

Tatham recently retired as Chairman and CEO of Burke, Inc., and continues to serve as a consultant and lecturer for the Burke Institute. Before joining Burke, he was a professor on the graduate business faculty of Arizona State University, and taught at the University of Cincinnati, as well as the University of Alabama. An active consulting practice while teaching led Tatham to join Burke, Inc. as a consultant and both a program developer and lecturer in the Burke Institute seminar program. In the latter capacity, Dr. Tatham lectured in hundreds of seminars over a 30-year career. Tatham joined Burke full-time in 1976 and established an advanced Decision Sciences group at Burke. Constantly concerned with Burke's adherence to the highest standards of research science, Tatham's influence spread throughout the organization, culminating in his appointment as President and CEO in 1989.

Dr. Tatham earned a B.B.A. degree from the University of Texas at Austin, a M.B.A. from Texas Tech University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Alabama. He is coauthor of Multivariate Data Analysis (Prentice Hall, 6th Edition, 2005), and his research papers have appeared in several publications, including Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of the Market Research Society, Business Horizons and Management Science. He has served as a member of the Marketing Research Advisory Board, University of Georgia; the MSMR Advisory Board, University of Texas at Arlington; the Advisory Board of the A.C. Nielsen Marketing Research Center, University of Wisconsin and the Advisory Board of the College of Business, Northern Kentucky University. Dr. Tatham has lectured at Thammasat University in Bangkok, the Kellogg School at Northwestern University, Eastern Kentucky University, University of Texas, Arlington, University of Georgia, Arizona State University and Northern Kentucky University. Dr. Tatham was recently honored as a "Legend of Marketing Research" at the 2007 AMA Executive Insights Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Founded in 1931, Burke is an independent, full service marketing research and decision support company. Burke capitalizes on its state-of-the-art research execution, advanced analytical techniques and leading edge technology to provide decision support solutions to companies across all major industry sectors. A 100% employee-owned company, Burke is also the industry leader in marketing research and consumer insights education through the Burke Institute, which has trained more than 70,000 participants from 10,000 companies, through more than 3,000 public and in-house customized marketing research seminars in 39 different countries. Burke is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, with regional offices throughout the United States.

Dear A.C. Nielsen Students:

We are very excited to announce the arrival of the new director of the A.C. Nielsen Center for Marketing Research —Kristin Branch.

Kristin comes to us from Spectrum Brands where she was a senior brand manager for Remington shavers for the past three years. She has extensive experience in marketing, marketing research and business management. Most recently, Kristin has been involved in various research projects such as qualitative and quantitative concept testing, pricing optimization, as well as general consumption data analysis. Prior to Spectrum, Kristin worked at GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare North America for two years, managing brands such as Aquafresh, Abreva, Debrox and Chap-et. She has also held marketing positions at W.W. Grainger, Inc., GMR Marketing and Wheel & Sprocket.

Kristin has strong ties to UW-Madison. She earned her MBA in Marketing and Entrepreneurship from the School of Business in 2002. She was very active in student activities during her tenure at UW. She was Co-President of Graduate Business Association, a Student Ambassador for the School of Business and a project assistant for the MBA Program Office. Upon graduation, Kristin continued her active involvement with the business school as a member of the Wisconsin Business Alumni Board of Advisors.

Kristin’s official start date with the School of Business is August 1. Neeraj and I are thrilled to have Kristin onboard. The three of us are looking forward to working closely with you throughout your MBA experience.

The Spring 2007 edition of the A.C. Nielsen Center's newsletter, Focal Point, is now online!
Read all of the stories and see our photo gallery.

Executive Director Neeraj Arora took part in this roundtable to discuss how data is affecting business.
UPDATE is published in print and online each June and December by Wisconsin Business Alumni to inform alumni and friends about programs and activities of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business and its alumni.

Check out the UPDATE article.

During the fall 2005 semester we partnered with dmr, a consulting firm that specializes in direct marketing strategies and tactics for radio stations, to understand the impact that Arbitron's adoption of the Portable People Meter (PPM) will have on the radio industry.

An archive of "The Future of Advertising Research: Project Apollo Pilot" presentation is now available. This presentation
requires QuickTime player. Also, the PowerPoint^tm file of the presentation is also online.

Many graduates enter the working world with energy and great plans for their careers. Do those plans become a reality? Sometimes people's ambitions change due to life circumstances or simply fade into the background as their careers progress. Not for Karlis Nollendorfs, MS '96 and Senior Manager of Consumer Insights at General Mills, Inc.

Read the full story on the Wisconsin MBA Blog.

To view an archive of the presentation given at the Project Apollo Conference, please click here.
The video requires Quicktime or VideoLAN to watch.

Money Magazine recently named market research analyst as the sixth best job in the country based on growth, salary, flexibility, stress levels and ease of entry and advancement. Money reported an average salary of $82,500 a year and an average of 16,000 job openings annually.

Read the full story as reported by WBA News.

Continue reading "Marketing Research Ranked one of the Top Jobs in America" »

Download a copy of the Annual Report 2005 - 2006.

DMR, the leading provider of strategic marketing consulting and services for the broadcast industry, announced today that it is partnering with the University of Wisconsin-Madison's A.C. Nielsen Center for Marketing Research to determine how broadcasters can best learn from Portable People Meter results, and apply learning to both on and off air marketing communications.

See the whole press-release on dmr's webpage.

Nielsen scholars Belinda Bao and Bhavana Rao worked with First Business Bank to conduct the second annual economic indicator survey for Dane County. The results were presented to Madison business community this week, and have been very well received.

View the student report and presentation.

Janet Christopher was recognized today by students and alumni of the UW-Madison for her outstanding contributions. Alumni shared their memories of Janet's support to them and presented her with a photo album of their memories. She was also presented with a travel certificate worth over $3,000. Click here to view the photos presented to Janet at the summit dinner.

Nielsen Scholars Vera Ivanova and Bryan Vaughn won first place in the 2004 GMN Marketing Challenge before a panel of judges from Guidant, W. W. Grainger and Kraft, sponsors of the event. The case analysis included overall marketing strategy, customer segmentation and positioning, and customer relationship management.

Gayle Fuguitt, UW-Madison alumni and past chair for the A.C. Nielsen Center External Advisory board was featured in Update Magazine. It outlines her success as V.P. of Consumer Insights at General Mills.
Read the full story here.

Nielsen Scholars Julia Nicholas and Susan Yolton presented research results from a Big Ten Alumni Association survey today at the Fluno Center. In attendance were directors and CEO's from those alumni organizations. The results were used to plan the two day conference around key issues facing alumni organizations.