Notre Dame professor recognized for research on CMO value

University of Notre Dame professor Frank Germann recently received the Sheth Foundation/Journal of Marketing Award for his paper “The Chief Marketing Officer Matters!,” which appeared in the May 2015 issue of the Journal of Marketing.

The Sheth Foundation/Journal of Marketing Award honors the article published in the Journal of Marketing in 2015 that has made the most important long-term contributions to the field of marketing. Nominations were solicited from members of the JM Editorial Review Board, with a committee of former journal editors selecting the winning article. The criteria for selection include the quality of the article’s contribution to theory and practice, its originality, its technical competence, and its impact on the field of marketing.

For the study, Germann and co-authors Peter Ebbes of HEC Paris and Rajdeep Grewal of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill analyzed data from up to 155 publicly traded firms over a 12-year period (2000-2011). They found that the performance of firms that employed a CMO was on average about 15% higher than those that don’t.

The award selection committee commented that the paper deserved the recognition for using rigorous econometric techniques to resolve previously contradictory findings about the value of the CMO role in improving firm performance and for opening areas for future research. “The findings are especially timely when many marketing activities are being assumed by non-marketing parts of the firm. This paper implies that such re-organizing has potentially deleterious effects. Marketing has its role, and the CMO really does matter!” according to the committee.

Germann’s research interests are in the area of marketing strategy, including examining how marketing actions and marketing assets influence firm performance. His research has been published in leading marketing journals and has also been featured in the Harvard Business Review, by the Marketing Science Institute as part of the Institute’s journal selections initiative, and on NPR, the Today Show (NBC), The Atlantic and USA Today, among others.

A recipient of numerous teaching and research recognitions, Germann was selected as a 2017 Marketing Science Institute (MSI) Young Scholar. Before entering academia, he worked for Johnson & Johnson, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and the German Red Cross. He earned degrees from Reutlingen University and the University of Savoy, as well as an MBA from the University of Notre Dame, and a Master of Applied Statistics and Ph.D. from Penn State University.