Marketing Science Institute

Founded in 1961, the Marketing Science Institute (MSI) is a corporate-membership-based organization dedicated to bridging the gap between marketing theory and business practice. MSI is unique as the only research-based organization with an expansive network of marketing academics from the best business schools all over the world as well as marketing executives from 60+ leading companies.

As a nonprofit institution, MSI financially supports academic research for the development—and practical translation—of marketing knowledge on topics of importance to business performance. Every two years, MSI asks the Board of Trustees to provide input to help set priorities for the research that will guide activities for the next few years. These priorities enable MSI to engage in its most critical mission: moving the needle on important marketing problems. MSI supports studies by academics on these issues and disseminates the results through conferences, workshops, webinars, publications, and online content.

In the past 10 years, MSI has sponsored 70+ conferences and workshops. MSI's Working Paper Series includes more than one thousand working papers, many of which have garnered the marketing field’s most prestigious awards. The "Relevant Knowledge" book series includes over a dozen monographs on topics including marketing ROI, consumer insights, innovation, and branding.

MSI headquarters are located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The primary governing body of MSI is the Board of Trustees, which is made up of representatives of each of MSI’s member companies. MSI's staff of 11 employees are responsible for membership and research programs, conferences, publications, and all other operations.

In 1961, Scott Paper Company President Thomas B. McCabe founded the “Institute for Science in Marketing” with input from leading thinkers John Howard, Albert Wesley Frey, and Wroe Alderson. Twenty-nine companies responded to his membership appeal, establishing MSI as a nonprofit organization that would “contribute to the emergence of a definitive science of marketing” and “stimulate increased application of scientific techniques to the understanding and solving of current marketing problems.” Offices were established in Philadelphia near the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and Wendell Smith became its first president.

MSI's founding coincided with a period of booming growth in the U.S. marketing systems, fueled by pent-up demand from war-years restrictions on production of consumer goods, and an explosion in population growth. Key marketing concepts, such as the “4 Ps” (product, price, place, promotion) of marketing were introduced. Management science theory, methods, and tools were infused into marketing, and consumer behavior emerged as an area of study within marketing.

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