Oded Netzer, the Philip H. Geier Jr. Associate Professor in the Marketing Division, has received the 2012 George S. Eccles Research Fund award.Netzer’s work centers on one of the major business challenges of the data-rich environment of the 21st century: developing quantitative methods that transform data to gain a deeper understanding of customer preferences. He is especially known for his recent contributions to managing customer bases through dynamic segmentation and a marketing framework that can help move customers toward deeper relationships with a firm. Netzer also uses text mining and network analysis to capture and interpret the ocean of online textual data — understanding consumer preferences and perceptions without asking a single question.“I thank the Eccles family for commemorating and supporting research at Columbia Business School. I am grateful, honored, and flattered to be chosen as the inaugural recipient of this award,” Netzer said. “I intend to use this award for the same purpose that earned me the prize — conducting cutting-edge research at the interface between business theory and practice.”The Eccles Research Fund, formally called the George S. Eccles Research Award in Finance and Economics, is a new component of the George S. Eccles Prize for Excellence in Economic Writing, established at the School in 1986 by Spencer Eccles, chairman and chief executive of First Security Corp. of Salt Lake City, Utah. The prize honors his uncle, George Eccles, a 1922 graduate of Columbia Business School. Henry Kissinger received the 2012 writing award for his book, Henry Kissinger on China (The Penguin Press HC, 2011).“Our directors share the School’s goals, as did George, of fostering public discourse about economic issues in ways that are accessible to students and the public,” said Spencer Eccles of the George S. and Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation. “We hope the re-established prize, supplemented now by support for important research, will renew the positive impact it made during its initial years of existence.”