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MIT Sloan and General Motors honor Harvard professor with Buck Weaver Award for outstanding contributions to the field of marketing

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.-(Business Wire)-September 5, 2008 - Gerald Zaltman, the Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, at the Harvard Business School, was honored today with the Sixth Annual Buck Weaver Award for Marketing. Established by the MIT Sloan School of Management in 2003 and sponsored by General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM), the award recognizes individuals who have made important contributions to the advancement of theory and practice in marketing science.

Glen Urban, dean emeritus and professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan, and Andy Norton, Director of General Motors North America Portfolio Planning, presented the award during a two-day symposium of the same name held at the MIT Faculty Club September 5-6. Zaltman presented a paper entitled, “Some Lessons Learned During A Career” at the conference.

According to Urban, Zaltman was selected from a pool of 25 competitors for his “long career in academic innovation and influencing practice. He is a natural winner.”

Prof. Zaltman is a former member of the Executive Committee of Harvard University's Mind, Brain, and Behavior Interfaculty Initiative. He was previously Co-Director of The Mind of the Market Laboratory at HBS. He is a co-founder and senior partner in the research based consulting firm of Olson Zaltman Associates whose clients include some of the world’s most respected firms and brands. Professor Zaltman holds a Ph.D in sociology from The Johns Hopkins University, an M.B.A from the University of Chicago, and an A.B. in government from Bates College. Professor Zaltman held positions at Northwestern University and the University of Pittsburgh before joining Harvard University in 1991.

Zaltman’s research interests focus on customer behavior and marketing strategy. His book, How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market (2003) has been translated into 15 languages. It has received several awards and has ranked among the top five selling business books in North America and Europe. His newest book, co-authored with Lindsay Zaltman, is Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal about the Minds of Consumers (2008). This book addresses the deep metaphors or unconscious frames people use that influence their thinking and behavior.

Henry Grady “Buck” Weaver was a pioneer in marketing research and market-based decision making in the 1930s. Working for GM, he was the first known director of marketing research who went on to pioneer formal consumer research on attitudes, opinions, styling preferences, and customer design feature priorities. His contributions to the field were noted by Time Magazine in the 1930s and then were recently uncovered by GM's Vince Barabba, now retired. Barabba and Urban developed the concept for the annual award, which is held in conjunction with an annual conference.

For over fifty years the MIT Sloan School of Management, based in Cambridge, Mass., has been one of the world's leading academic sources of innovation in management. The School's mission is to develop principled, innovative leaders who improve the world and to generate ideas that advance management practice.

The pioneering research of MIT Sloan faculty in building and implementing marketing models and decision-support systems has enhanced new product development for decades. Other award-winning research projects focus on customer satisfaction and the psychological underpinnings of economic and consumer behavior.

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