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Wendell R. Smith, Ph.D.

Known as the father of market segmentation for his keystone article published in the Journal of Marketing in 1956 (“Product Differentiation and Market Segmentation as Alternative Marketing Strategies”) Wendell Ross Smith was born in 1911 in the small town of Shenandoah, Iowa. He grew up working in his father's shoe store and on his grandfather's farms. He attended the University of Iowa in Iowa City, and stayed on to go to graduate school and work as an assistant professor. Married to Ruth Anne Frudenfeld, the couple had three children. When the 1956 article was published, Smith's revolutionary idea transformed the way goods and services are marketed around the world. He was catapulted to international fame, and moved to the East Coast to take a job with Alderson and Sessions, a consulting firm in Philadelphia.

Over the course of his career, he rose to become president of the American Marketing Association, served on President Nixon's economic advisory council, and as Vice-President of Marketing for RCA worked at "30 Rock" in New York City and rubbed elbows with the likes of David Sarnoff, Walt Disney, Jack Paar and Johnny Carson. He was president of the Marketing Science Institute in Philadelphia,consulted for British Petroleum in France, Time-Life in Japan, and eventually returned to his academic roots as Commonwealth Professor and Dean of the School of Business at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA.

Smith died of complications of Alzheimer's Disease in Towson, Maryland, in 1986.