Gerard Tellis, the Neely Chaired Professor of American Enterprise and professor of marketing, management, and organization, was given the 2021 Buck Weaver Award for Lifetime Contributions to Theory and Practice in Marketing Science.
The award is made yearly on behalf of the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science (ISMS), to scholars and practitioners who have achieved excellence in both rigor and relevance in marketing science.
“It’s a thrill to be recognized,” said Tellis. “And it’s humbling to be counted with such luminaries as Kotler, Aaker, Zaltman, and Little.”
The award is the most recent for Tellis, a widely noted leader in his field and is an acknowledgement of his efforts to promote rigorous and relevant scholarship. As the director for USC Marshall’s Institute for Outlier Research in Business (iORB), Tellis has helped create a database to uncover and amplify the scholarship of his Marshall colleagues.
As the president of ISMS, Tellis recently presided over its 43rd Marketing Science Conference, hosted by the Simon Business School of the University of Rochester. The conference, although virtual, drew 900 attendees. Tellis also presided over the conference’s Doctoral Consortium as well, which drew 112 students.
USC Marshall hosted the ISMS Conference in 2017.
In making the award announcement, the ISMS selection committee was effusive in its praise for Tellis’ work:
[Members of the selection committee] “…were impressed with the breadth and depth of your scholarly work spanning multiple domains from advertising and pricing to quality and innovations; your extensive record of widely read and widely cited articles and books, the ever-accelerating pace of innovations in the research methods you use and the applications you study, and the many important ways in which you have bridged academia and practice globally.”
Seasoned Scholar
Tellis is the author of seven books and more than 300 research papers. His Google Scholar citation count is approaching 30,000. His research has garnered many “best paper” awards, including twice winning the William F. Odell Award for Best Article in the Journal of Marketing in the past 10 years—in 1998 and 2019.
He has won many of the field’s important awards, including the AMA-Irwin-McGraw-Hill Distinguished Educator Award, the Churchill Award for Lifetime Contributions to Marketing Research, awarded in 2019 by the American Marketing Association, and the Paul D. Converse Award for contribution to science in marketing. He was named a Fellow of the INFORMS Society of Marketing Science and the American Marketing Association in addition to three other academies.
As a leading expert in innovation, tech evolution, social media, and AI, he regularly contributes thought leadership opinion pieces to national outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, and Nasdaq.
“ISMS’ recognition of Gerry for this prestigious honor enhances the reputation of all of us at Marshall and at USC,” said Anthony Dukes, Department Chair and professor of marketing. “Faculty are extremely proud to be associated with his numerous successes.”
In addition to iORB, Tellis is the director of USC Marshall’s Center for Global Innovation.
He earned his Ph.D. in business administration from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
