• DOI:10.1177/1470593108104217
• Corpus ID: 143845097

In memoriam — Barbara B. Stern (Co-Editor of Marketing Theory, 2000—2008)

@article{Holbrook2009InM,
  title={In memoriam — Barbara B. Stern (Co-Editor of Marketing Theory, 2000—2008)},
  author={Morris B. Holbrook},
  journal={Marketing Theory},
  year={2009},
  volume={9},
  pages={5 - 7}
}

• M. Holbrook
• Published 1 March 2009
• Business
• Marketing Theory

Barbara Stern was a great lady. A brilliant scholar. A terrific colleague. A treasured friend. As a scholar, Barb Stern developed a whole new style of marketing research that relied heavily on approaches borrowed from literary criticism and reshaped the tools for advancing our understanding of marketing theory, consumer behavior, and advertising applications. Toward this end, she brought to bear a unique educational background that began with a BA from Cornell (1959), followed by an MA in English from Hunter (1961) and a PhD in English from the City University of New York (1965). With this start, Barb taught English at various local colleges during the 1960s/1970s (NYC Community, Hunter, CUNY, Saint Peter’s). During this time, a brief marriage produced two daughters (Wendy and Leslie) and the realization that a single mom could not thrive in the City on the salary of a parttime English teacher. So Barb reinvented herself as a marketing academic. She began by earning her MBA from Fordham (1981), joined the marketing faculty at Kean College (1982), and then moved to Rutgers (1986) with rapid promotions to tenure (1990), Professor I (1993), and Professor II (1998). As an esteemed educator at Rutgers, Barb served as the Chairperson in Marketing (1998–2005) while also doing heroic service in our professional associations, on numerous editorial boards, as a prize-winning reviewer, and as Co-Editor-in-Chief (with Maclaran) of Marketing Theory (2000–2008), Co-Editor (with Brown) of the InterpretiveMarketing-Research Series for Routledge (1997–2008), and Co-Editor (with Maclaran, Saren, and Tadajewski) of the Handbook of Marketing Theory (2007–2008). Even more important to the future of scholarship in marketing, Barb unleashed a torrent of outstanding research publications. Between 1985 and 2008, these included 74 articles in first-class refereed journals, 21 book chapters, three edited books, and any number of conference presentations, proceedings papers, book reviews, invited columns, and visiting lectures. In other words, Barb produced a staggering intellectual output – much or most of it focused on the application of insights from literary criticism in general and feminist perspectives in particular to issues of interest in advertising, consumer research, and marketing theory at the broadest levels (including those relevant to ‘macro’ aspects of societal problems). It would not exaggerate Barb’s contribution to say that she transformed the possibilities for interpretive work in marketing research. By virtue of