Practice Prize Report: The 2016 Isms Gary Lilien Practice Prize Competition

This report describes entrants in the 2016 ISMS Gary Lilien Marketing Science Practice Prize Competition, representing the best examples of rigor plus relevance that our profession produces. The winner, describing a collaboration between the World Bank and a team based at the London Business School, involved a randomized control experiment to calibrate the relative effectiveness of business training on business performance of microentrepreneurs in South Africa. The other four finalists include a method to estimate the value of key word searches that allowed for cannibalization of organic search at eBay; a methodology to model and manage customer satisfaction at the National Dutch Railways; a stock-carrying algorithm to assist a fashion department store manage inventory on a store-by-store basis, implemented by Celect, an inventory-management consultant based in Boston; and an integrated marketing communications-optimization tool used by Mercedes-Benz to increase advertising effectiveness.