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By JACQUELINE GHOSEN

Published: September 23, 2009

A new research group, directed by two School of Management faculty members, will provide thought leadership in issues relevant to success in marketing.

Arun Jain, Samuel P. Capen Professor of Marketing Research, and Ram Bezawada, assistant professor of marketing, are co-directors of the initiative, named the Research Group on Integrated Marketing (RIM).

Research by the group is already under way, with a focus on using scientific methods to solve managerially related problems. RIM seeks to develop novel, sophisticated algorithms and techniques to successfully classify, estimate, predict, cluster and more accurately describe the purchasing behavior of customers.

RIM has received initial funding from the Premier Group, the largest wine and spirit sellers in Western New York, and the UB 2020 Interdisciplinary Research Development Fund (IRDF). The IRDF funding was secured in collaboration with Aidong Zhang, chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

“We are working with Dr. Zhang to extend methodology developed in data mining—used primarily in cancer/DNA research—for use in market segmentation, the key strategic tool for all marketing firms,” Jain says.

The Premier Group has made a three-year commitment for funding, and RIM is one of six campus-wide projects to receive an IRDF grant, awarded twice a year on a competitive basis through the Office of the Vice President for Research, for the spring 2009 cycle.

“The best business school research not only advances the body of knowledge in a field, but also has direct practical use in the business world,” said Arjang Assad, dean of the School of Management. “The fact that this team received funding from both the Premier Group and UB’s IRDF means that they have achieved both goals. We are proud of the industry insights of our marketing professors in this project.”