Practice Prize Report: The 2018 ISMS Gary Lilien Practice Prize Competition

This report summarizes the entrants in the 2018 ISMS Gary Lilien Marketing Science Practice Prize Competition, designed to identify, encourage, recognize, and reward the application of impactful marketing science to industry and noncommercial settings. These applications aim to showcase innovative and impactful examples of applications demonstrating the best of rigor and relevance that our profession produces. The winner described an application of econometric and experimental techniques at the French-based retailer of body, face, fragrances, and home products, L’Occitane, aimed to optimize budget allocation between online and off-line marketing expenditure across six countries. The other three finalists include a decision support aid to assist members of the United Services Automobile Association (a not-for-profit organization to assist military service personnel select and finance their automobile purchases) choose vehicles that balance their individual tastes and preferences with their financial circumstances, a business-to-business pricing decision support aid for use by the sales force of Hadco Metal Trading to avoid loss of margin by undercharging and loss of business by overcharging, and a methodology to test online advertisements cost-effectively by generating “ghost ads” as a way of minimizing control group costs in a reliable and valid way.