A paper co-authored by Vithala Rao has won the 2005 Robert D. Buzzell Best Working Papers Award from the Marketing Science Institute (MSI). Rao is the Deane W. Malott Professor of Management and professor of marketing and quantitative methods at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management. He shares the award with research colleagues Manoj K. Agarwal of Binghamton University and Denise Dahlhoff of the Wharton School's executive education department at the University of Pennsylvania.

The paper, "Branding Strategy and the Intangible Value of the Firm," which was published in the Journal of Marketing, examines branding strategies in 113 U.S. firms to determine which of three strategies (corporate branding, house of brands or mixed branding) is most associated with future profit potential.

The MSI best-paper award honors the authors of papers that have made the most significant contribution to marketing practice and thought. It also signals the kind of writing and research that is of lasting value to corporate marketing executives.

Rao's interests lie in the development and application of analytical models for marketing research and marketing strategy. His publications have dealt with such topics as dynamic pricing; product positioning and product design; application of multidimensional scaling and conjoint models for the analysis of consumer preferences and perceptions; market structure analysis; brand equity; acquisition; and evaluation of subsets of multi-attributed items. He has consulted for various industrial firms and is currently engaged in research on issues associated with preannouncement strategies, price bundling, choices of bundles, resource allocation and competitive reactions.

Since joining the Johnson School faculty in 1970, he has published more than 100 articles and five books -- most recently (with Joel Steckel) "The New Science of Marketing" (1995) and "Analysis for Strategic Marketing" (1998). He received the Johnson School's Exceptional Research Award in 2000-01.