Frank Bass - Academic Career

Academic Career

Bass received his B.B.A. from Southwestern University in 1949, and his M.B.A. from the University of Texas in 1950. After completing his M.B.A. at Texas, he became interested in marketing issues. He worked as a teaching assistant and assistant professor in marketing while earning his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois in 1954. In 1957 he became an assistant professor in marketing at the University of Texas.

In 1959, Bass was selected to become a Fellow at Harvard's Institute of Basic Mathematics For Application to Business. It was this exposure to advanced analytic methods that heavily influenced his research for the next 47 years. In 1961 he became a professor of industrial administration at the Graduate School of Purdue University. In 1969 he published his landmark paper on modeling consumer goods, which became widely known as the Bass diffusion model. In 1974 he was appointed as Loeb Distinguished Professor of Marketing at the Krannert Graduate School of Management of Purdue University. In 1982 he returned to Texas when he was appointed Eugene McDermott Professor of Management at the University of Texas, Dallas. In 1986 he was awarded the Paul D. Converse Award. In 1990 he was awarded the Richard D. Irwin/American Marketing Association Distinguished Marketing Educator Award. In 2005 Bass was awarded an honorary Doctorate by the University of South Australia, and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science at the University was named partially in his honor.

Bass sought to bring a more rigorous quantitative approach to marketing problems. His research contributions over a 52-year career in academics and private consulting ranged widely over a broad set of marketing issues. Using models and advanced statistical techniques often adapted from economics and the social sciences, he made fundamental contributions that revolutionized the way marketing was taught in universities and applied in business. He was a leading voice in the marketing science movement and one of the most frequently cited marketing researchers in professional journals and other scholarly publications.