Marketing paper receives long term impact award
Professor Emma Macdonald, Charles Huang Chair in International Business and Director of the Stephen Young Institute at Strathclyde Business School, has been awarded the 2026 ISBM-David T. Wilson-Sheth Foundation Award for Long Term Impact in B2B Marketing for their 2016 Journal of Marketing paper “How Business Customers Judge Solutions: Solution Quality and Value in Use”.
This award is made biennially to a paper published in a refereed journal that has made a significant long run impact on the theory and practice of B2B Marketing.
The award is supported by the Sheth Foundation and named in honour of the late Penn State Professor David T. Wilson, a leading B2B scholar and founding Managing Director of the ISBM (Institute for the Study of Business Markets).
The paper was co-written with Michael Kleinaltenkamp, Professor Emeritus of Business and Services Marketing at Freie Universitat, Berlin, and Professor Hugh N.Wilson, University of Warwick.
Professor Stefan Wuyts, Penn State, ISBM Director and Prize Committee Chair, said. “The winning paper has played a critical role in our evolving understanding of how business customers judge solutions and the value they create. Based on grounded discovery research across business markets, the authors offer a new perspective on value as emerging from supplier resources, customer resources, and integration processes. In contrast to the prevailing paradigm at the time, they conceptualise value as something that is not predetermined and easily verified but cocreated with the customer, continually audited, and enhanced while in use. These new ideas along with a set of unique propositions have inspired a stream of research.”
Alongside Professor Wuyts, other committee members were Professor Gary L. Lilien, Penn State and ISBM Director Emeritus, and Professor Douglas Bowman, Emory University and President, Sheth Foundation.
Professor Wuyts added, “A domain expert who nominated this paper summarised that this work has shifted cognitive templates in the B2B marketing field by redefining the locus of quality, reconceptualising value as unfolding over a solution’s lifetime, considering not only organisational but also individual goals, introducing the concept of the usage centre, and formulating strategic implications for suppliers. This paper has been cited over 600 times and continues to be discussed in many doctoral seminars and B2B courses. It has also been picked up by the business press and by numerous leading solution providers.”
The authors of the winning paper receive a cash award of $2000 along with a plaque of recognition and this year will be honoured at a special session of the ISBM Academic Conference to be held at Emory University, Goizueta Business School, June 24-25, 2026.
Published: 5 May 2026
