Michel Wedel to receive scientific Ubbo Emmius Medal 2019

Dr. Michel Wedel, Professor of Consumer Science and Distinguished University Professor at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, and ‘Henri Theil Visiting Chair of Marketing and Econometrics’ and the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, will be awarded with the Ubbo Emmius Medal of the University of Groningen. The awarding will take place during the Ceremony for the Opening of the Academic Year 2019-2020 on Monday 2 September.

Most important for the award is that Dr. Wedel is a prolific researcher, widely known for his work on market segmentation with mixture regression models and visual marketing with eye tracking. Including his book chapters, he has around 200 publications, of which about 60 in top marketing journals, including the International Journal of Research in Marketing.

Research with impact

Michel Wedel has developed seven software packages that enable PhD students and practitioners to implement the methods that he has developed. His work has had a large impact, as evidenced by well over 20,000 citations and an H-index of 72 (Google Scholar). He ranked the first Netherlands marketing scholar based on productivity (Verhoef & Stremersch, 2006, JNVM, 2006), and ranked first in the Netherlands Economists Productivity Ranking (De Economist, 2007). He has received a number of best paper awards, and the Churchill, Parlin and Irwin-McGraw Hill lifetime awards from the AMA for his work in marketing research. He also received the Muller Award for lifetime achievement in research in the social and behavioral sciences from the Royal Netherlands Academy for the Sciences (2005, with Jan-Benedict Steenkamp), and was the first and so far only one in business to receive this award.

Professor Wedel has been the (co-) chair of 21 PhD dissertations, twelve while he worked in the Netherlands, nine while he was in the US. Michel supervised and mentored students that received a Ph.D. not only in Marketing, but also in Economics (Sandor and Ebbes) and in Mathematics (Yan, Liu and Dong).

Wedel in Groningen

While he was employed at Groningen, Michel Wedel has been involved in ample service for the European Marketing Academy and the field as a whole. He has served in guest editor and area editor roles for the International Journal of Research in Marketing, and was on its board for about 10 years. He has been on the editorial board all of the marketing A-journals, and was or is the co-editor of five special issues for different journals. While in the Netherlands he has been a key contributor to PhD education in Europe, through the European and Dutch PhD training networks (EDEN, LNBE, NAKE), which were formed at a time that the PhD programs in many schools were too small to sustain their own PhD course curriculum. He has served on a host of national and international organizations, boards and committees, and has chaired several conferences. He was a member of the executive committee of the European Marketing Academy; he has served as President of the Netherlands Classification Society, and is elected US Correspondent of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences.

Strong connection

Professor Wedel still feels strongly connected with the University of Groningen. Since he left the UG he has been an honorary professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) until some years ago. He has worked with multiple professors at the school including Tom Wansbeek and Peter Leeflang, and most recently with Tammo Bijmolt and PK Kannan. When he received the prestigious Irwin McGrawHill Award at the most recent AMA winter conference, he clearly mentioned the important role of Groningen in his development as scientific researcher, thereby promoting UG as an excellent place to work to develop an academic career. Michel is clearly one of the most prominent and successful researchers ever been affiliated with the Faculty of Economics and Business of UG.

About the Medal

The Ubbo Emmius Medal was established by the Groningen University Fund (GUF) in 1964 on the 350th anniversary of the UG. There are two versions of the medal: one for scientific merits and one for social merits. Both tokens are awarded once every few years.