Bart Weitz wins Retailing SIG’s First Lifetime Achievement Award

Gainesville, Fla. – The Warrington College of Business Administration is proud to announce that Professor Barton A. Weitz is the recipient of the first Lifetime Achievement Award presenting by the Retailing SIG of the American Marketing Association (AMA). Professor Weitz has been a faculty member of the Warrington College of Business Administration since 1985 as the JCPenney Eminent Scholar in Marketing, where he also serves as executive director of the David F. Miller Center for Retailing Education and Research, one of just four business school-based retail centers in the country. The annual symposium sponsored by the Miller Center, “Retailing Smarter,” is the largest university-based conference for retail managers and students in the US. Before joining the faculty at Florida, Weitz began his academic career at UCLA, and then moved to Wharton.

His research interests are in developing partnering relationships between firms in distribution channels, motivating and compensating salespeople, improving customer service, and electronic commerce. Professor Weitz literally wrote the book on selling, Retailing Management, the best-selling textbook in the retailing market. Weitz is a past chair of the AMA (2002) and, among his many honors, was named the AMA Distinguished Educator in 1998.

One of Weitz’ earliest contributions to the study of retailing was a 1981 article on adaptive selling, published in Journal of Marketing. It was later selected as one of the ten most influential articles on personal selling and sales force management of the 20th century by the AMA Sales Force Management SIG. He has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on this topic, as well as two textbooks, Personal Selling: Building Relationships and Selling: Principles and Methods. Based on his work in the field, in 2007, he was also awarded the Interorganizational SIG’s lifetime achievement award for his collective work on channels and the interorganizational boundaries of the firm.

Professor Weitz has also made an enormous impact on the field through his service activities. He was the editor of Journal of Marketing Research from 1991-1994, the co-editor of Marketing Letters from 1997-2006, and is on the editorial boards of JM, JMR, IJRM, Marketing Science, Marketing Letters, Journal of Retailing, JPSSM, JBR, among others, and has given over 150 talks and presentations.

The breadth of Weitz’ service to the AMA is vast; he has been on the Board of Directors and Strategic Planning Task Force for the past decade. He has also served as Secretary Treasurer, VP of Publications, VP of Finance, and has been a regular reviewer, track chair, and served on a variety of task forces for the organization. He has made 21 appearances as a faculty member for the Doctoral Consortium and Faculty Consortium.

Professor Weitz has served on the Board of Directors or Advisory Board for the Marketing Science Institute, INFORMS College of Marketing, Direct Selling Association, Direct Selling Education Foundation, National Retail Federation, National Retail Institute, and the Florida Retail Federation.

Professor Weitz has also chaired nearly 20 dissertations, and his former students include Erin Anderson, Harish Sujan, Shankar Ganesan, Ramarao Desiraju, Anne Stringfellow, Kevin Bradford and Qiong Wang. He has also served on the committees of Hubert Gatignon, Marion Burke, Susan Broniarczyk, AV Muthukrishnan, Susan Fournier, Stacy Wood, Stijn Van Osselear, and Yubo Chen.

Bart Weitz received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1976, and he also holds an MBA from Stanford and a BSE from MIT.