Rule No. 1: Know your customer

Marketing institute recognizes Hamilton

Hamilton studies factors that make consumers buy certain products or features. The assistant professor of marketing at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business has done that well enough to be chosen by a national organization as one of the marketing industry’s next generation of leaders.

Hamilton recently presented her research during a program in Park City, Utah, for young scholars organized by the Marketing Science Institute of Cambridge, Mass., which supports academic studies addressing issues important to businesses.

Three other faculty members of the University of Maryland’s business school have been similarly honored by the institute in recent years, although none of the professors were at Maryland at the time, as they later were hired by the university.

‘‘The Smith School is renowned for attracting and retaining some of the most prominent researchers in the field of marketing, and the school is building a strong reputation as a source of promising up-and-coming scholars,” Roland Rust, chairman of the university’s marketing department, said in a statement.

Hamilton, 37, became a professor at the university in 2000 shortly after earning a doctorate in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management in Cambridge. The Smith School’s marketing department has been recognized for research on issues such as the digital economy, particularly in areas related to customer equity management and service marketing.

‘‘I’m really glad I came here. It’s been an exciting place to work,” Hamilton said.

One research project she has worked on involved why many consumers purchase items with numerous features only to get overwhelmed when they get home.

‘‘People are initially attracted to a device with a lot of features, but once they actually use it, most prefer a simpler model,” Hamilton said.

Born in Ithaca, N.Y., Hamilton grew up mostly in State College, Pa., as her father taught at Penn State. After earning a bachelor’s in policy analysis from Cornell University in Ithaca, she worked as a consultant for six years for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Boston.

‘‘I was not immediately attracted to the academic environment,” Hamilton said. ‘‘But I realized later that was what excited me.”

Besides conducting experimental research and teaching courses on consumer behavior at the University of Maryland, Hamilton has been published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research and Harvard Business Review. She has presented research papers to the Association of Consumer Research, the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, MIT’s Center for Innovation in Product Development and the International Center for Research on the Management of Technology.

Hamilton lives in Bethesda with her husband, James, and their young son. She enjoys spending time with her family, traveling and hiking.