Roland T. Rust is a Distinguished University Professor and David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, where he is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Excellence in Service. He is also a Visiting Chair in Marketing Research at Erasmus University (Netherlands) and an International Research Fellow of Oxford University’s Centre for Corporate Reputation (UK), as well as VP of Publications for the European Marketing Academy. His lifetime achievement honors include the AMA Irwin/McGraw-Hill Distinguished Marketing Educator Award, the EMAC Distinguished Marketing Scholar Award, Fellow of the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science, the Paul D. Converse Award, Fellow of the American Statistical Association, as well as the top career honors in service marketing, marketing research, marketing strategy, and advertising, and honorary doctorates in economics from the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland) and the Norwegian School of Economics.
He was one of the inaugural honorees in the American Marketing Association’s Marketing Legends video series and one of the inaugural AMA Fellows. He has won best article awards from five different journals, including four best article awards from the Journal of Marketing, as well as the Berry/AMA Book Award for the best book in marketing. He served as Editor of the Journal of Marketing, founded the annual Frontiers in Service Conference, was founding Editor of the Journal of Service Research, and served as Editor of the International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM). He has consulted with many leading companies worldwide, including such companies as American Airlines, AT&T, Comcast, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Eli Lilly, FedEx, Hershey, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, NASA, NCR, Nortel, Procter & Gamble, Sears, Sony, Starwood, Tata, Unilever, and USAA. A national class distance runner in his collegiate days, he has been inducted into the DePauw University Athletic Hall of Fame. He has coached one age-group world champion and several age-group national champions in track and triathlon.
Roland Rust and co-author Ming-Hui Huang are experienced education figures whose book The Feeling Economy: How Artificial Intelligence Is Creating the Era of Empathy predicts a brighter future for the growing AI revolution than the chorus of naysayers cautioning against its increasing influence. One can ascribe a progressive point of view to Rust’s and Huang’s ideas, but I can’t stress how important it is we divorce political persuasion from contemplating this issue. The writers believe AI has the wide-ranging potential to improve human interactions on a variety of fronts. It is impressive how strong they argue this point in relatively few pages. Despite its diminutive duration, The Feeling Economy benefits from an abundance of references and research. It never obscures the fine writing present from beginning to end. The writers, despite their academic backgrounds, never “talk” above the heads of their readers and relate several involved concepts to the reader in clear unvarnished terms. This willingness to connect to readers on their level is a principal strength driving this book and will help it endure long past its publication date.
Roland Rust and co-author Ming-Hui Huang are experienced education figures whose book The Feeling Economy: How Artificial Intelligence Is Creating the Era of Empathy predicts a brighter future for the...