Ruth N. Bolton is Professor of Marketing at the W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University.
She is the recipient of the 2016 American Marketing Association / Irwin / McGraw-Hill Distinguished Marketing Educator Award and the 2007 recipient of the Christopher Lovelock Career Contributions to Services Award. Both awards are given to only a select few academics; they recognize sustained and outstanding contributions to the fields of marketing and service science respectively.
She previously served as 2009-11 Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute. MSI is a nonprofit (501(c)3) organization, founded in 1961 to bring the best of science to the complex world of marketing. Today, MSI is unique as the only research-based organization with an extensive network of marketing academics from the best business schools world-wide, and marketers from 60+ leading global companies. MSI funds academic research and promotes its practical application with the aim of advancing marketing knowledge.
In her research, Dr. Bolton studies how organizations can improve business performance over time by creating, maintaining and enhancing relationships with customers. Her recent research has focused on the customer experience, multi-channel management and high technology, interactive services sold in global business-to-business markets. She previously held academic positions at Vanderbilt University, the University of Oklahoma, Harvard University, University of Maryland, and the University of Alberta. She also spent eight years with Verizon, working on projects in the telecommunications and information services industries. Dr. Bolton’s earlier published articles investigate how organizations’ service and pricing strategies influence customer satisfaction, loyalty and revenues. She has extensive experience with survey research design, as well as the econometric analysis of large-scale, integrative data bases. Her research is typically conducted in partnership with businesses, such as the Marriott Corporation, Hewlett-Packard and Schneider National Inc. She has also participated in executive education programs around the world.
Dr. Bolton has published articles in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Service Research, Management Science, Marketing Science, and other leading journals. She previously served as editor of the Journal of Marketing (2002-2005) and Area Editor of the Journal of Marketing Research (2005-2007), as well as serving on the Editorial Review Boards of other leading marketing journals. She has also served on the Board of Trustees of the Marketing Science Institute and the Board of Directors of the American Marketing Association. She received her B.Comm., with honors, from Queen’s University (Canada), and her M.Sc. and Ph.D. from Carnegie-Mellon University.
In 2016, Dr. Bolton’s book, Service Excellence: Creating Customer Experiences that Build Relationships, was published by Business Expert Press. In 2017, her autobiographical reflections were published in the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing. Her career is especially noteworthy for her work at the intersection of marketing science and practice and her role as the first female editor of the Journal of Marketing (the premier marketing journal).
