Gerald Smith

Dr. Gerald Smith is Associate Professor and former Chair of the Marketing Department at Boston College in the Carroll School of Management where he teaches Strategic Pricing Management. His research on pricing, value-based marketing, and brand strategy has been cited in popular press outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, Across the Board, and various media outlets. His research has been published in leading marketing journals, including Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Business Horizons, California Management Review, Sloan Management Review, Marketing Research, Marketing Management, Pricing Strategy & Practice, Journal of Retailing, Public Administration Review, Psychology & Marketing, and others.

Education

• B.A., Brandeis University
• M.B.A., Harvard Business School
• D.B.A., Boston University

Research Interests

• Pricing
• Brand management
• Customer value
• Frames of reference/framing.

Teaching Interests

• Pricing
• Brand Management
• Marketing Management.

Expertise

Consumer Behavior and Pricing

Selected Appointments And Awards

• Ray Keyes Distinguished Service Award, Carroll School of Management
• Teaching Star, Carroll School of Management
• Graduate Teaching Award, Carroll School of Management
• BusinessWeek Online: One of Best MBA Professors at Boston College
• Best Article Award, Emerald Literati Awards
• Best Paper Award, American Marketing Association, Winter Educators Conference
• Best Paper Award, Academy of Marketing Science, Annual Conference
• National Advisory Board, Pricing Institute, the Institute for International Research
• Editorial Advisory Board, Journal of Advertising Research
• Editorial Review Board, Marketing Management

Professional Activities

Professor Smith has been featured in leading executive programs at Wharton, Duke, Columbia University, Boston University, and Suffolk University, and in Europe and Asia at LIMAK, MCI Management Center Innsbruck, University of Ulster Business School, and Coursalytics in Moscow. He was an early thought leader with the Strategic Pricing Group, Inc., now part of Monitor-Deloitte, and was an original contributor to the best-selling The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing (now in its 6th edition with Routledge, 2018). He has long been an adviser in pricing and brand management to firms in a variety of industries—consumer packaged goods, health care, agribusiness, energy and power generation, automotive, semiconductors and electronics, lodging and food service, wholesale distribution, financial services, and to government. He serves on the board of BWG Corporation, and has served in various non-profit leadership roles.

Selected Publications

Books

• Gerald E. Smith (2021), Getting Price Right: The Behavioral Economics of Profitable Pricing, New York: Columbia University Press.
• Gerald E. Smith (2016), The Opt-Out Effect: Marketing Strategies that Empower Consumers and Win Customer-Driven Brand Loyalty, New York: Pearson Education/FT Press.
• Smith, Gerald E. (2015), Schooling the Prophet: The Influence of the Book of Mormon on Joseph Smith and the Early Restoration. Neal H. Maxwell Institute, Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press.
• Smith, Gerald E., ed. (2012), Visionary Pricing: Reflections and Advances in Honor of Dan Nimer, in the series Business-to-Business Brand Management: Theory, Research, and Executive Case Study Exercises. London: Emerald Group Publishing, Ltd.

Recent Articles

• Smith, Gerald E. (2020), “Disruptive Framing in Value Creation and Price-Setting:
• Transforming Value with Strategic Frames of Reference,” Business Horizons, Vol. 63, Issue 4 (July-August), 481-491.
• Hanna, Richard C., Katherine N. Lemon, Gerald E. Smith (2019), “Is transparency a good thing? How online price transparency and variability can benefit firms and influence consumer decision making,” Business Horizons, Vol. 62, Issue 2 (March-April), 1-10.
• Thomas T. Nagle and Gerald E. Smith (2016), “A Question of Value: Customer Value Mapping versus Economic Value Modeling,” in Andreas Hinterhuber and Todd Snelgrove, eds., Value First Then Price: Quantifying Value in Business-To-Business Markets From The Perspective Of Both Buyers And Sellers. New York: Routledge, 181-188; 2nd edition, Value First, Then Price: Building Value-Based Pricing Strategies (2022).