An article by Texas A&M Distinguished Professor Leonard Berry has recently been recognized by Business Horizons and Elsevier, the world’s largest publisher of medical and scientific literature, with their best paper of 2007 award.

Berry
Berry

The article is titled “Building a strong services brand: Lessons from Mayo Clinic,” and appeared in the May/June 2007 issue of Business Horizons. Berry co-authored the article with Kent Seltman, former head of marketing for the Mayo Clinic. The pair is currently completing a book titled Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic: Prescriptions for Service Success, which will be published in the summer of 2008 by McGraw-Hill.

Berry, who holds the M.B. Zale Chair in Retailing and Marketing Leadership at Mays Business School, has been studying customer service practices throughout most of his career, which has spanned four decades. He is also professor of humanities in medicine in the College of Medicine at the A&M System Health Science Center. During the 2001-2002 academic term he served as a visiting scientist at Mayo Clinic studying healthcare service. Since that time, the unique combination of marketing, service, and healthcare has been his research passion.

“Healthcare in this country is in a state of crisis, and it is probably the most important service there is,” said Berry. “Improving healthcare service is critically important.” Berry says he feels his work is starting to “make a difference” and that people are paying attention to what he has to say about how customer—or patient—care could be improved.

Berry is the founder of Texas A&M’s Center for Retailing Studies and served as its director from 1982 through June 2000. He is a former national president of the American Marketing Association. Berry’s most recent books, all published by The Free Press, include Discovering the Soul of Service, On Great Service, Marketing Services: Competing Through Quality, and Delivering Quality Service.

Notably, Berry has been identified as the most frequent contributor to the English-language services marketing literature in the world. He has been recognized dozens of times for his excellence in research and teaching.

Business Horizons is a bimonthly publication of the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. Berry and Seltman’s paper was chosen for the award by the editorial board of the journal, which seeks to honor the article that best meets the journal’s mission. In addition to the honor, the duo received a small monetary award and their accomplishment will be featured in the January/February 2008 issue of Business Horizons.