ARC: Connections: Tributes: Bill Zikmund
Bill Zikmund, a great friend of Oklahoma State University and the field of marketing, passed away on July 30, 2002 in Tulsa. Bill was a member of the marketing faculty at Oklahoma State University for 30 years. Those of us who were privileged to know Bill can attest to his great sense of humor, his love of baseball (especially his beloved Chicago Cubs), his affinity for Colorado, and especially his mastery of marketing as a managerial discipline.
Bill, through his books and teaching, impacted untold thousands of marketers. Through its many editions, his Principles book (with co-author Mike D’Amico) always seemed fresh and up-to-date. His Marketing Research and Business Research Methods books were among the first texts in these areas to break out of the stodgy, quantitative analysis mode and offer user-friendly approaches that students could better understand and that better reflected managerial applications of research. For many years, Bill’s books have been viewed as a gold standard by which others benchmarked their offerings.
Though the phrase may seem hackneyed, in truth Bill Zikmund really is irreplaceable. Bill occupied a special spot within the texture of the academic discipline of marketing, as well as within our department at OSU, that nobody can possibly fill in quite the same way. Fortunately, his influence will live on for ages to come through the lives of marketers he touched with his writings and his classes.
- Submitted by the OSU Marketing Faculty
For the first few years of my academic career, Bill Zikmund and I had our offices next door to each other. Bill was a great help to me in those early days. His passion for marketing was ever present. He had a great sense of humor and a great beer can collection. One day Bill came rushing out of his office door and slammed it a little too hard. It must have taken five minutes for the beer cans to stop falling down. We had a great laugh over that incident.
After leaving OSU, I always looked forward to seeing Bill at conferences. Bill's death occurred just before the AMA Summer Conference in 2002. All his friends were doubly saddened that Bill missed one of his beloved conferences by just a few weeks.
- Ray Fisk, University of New Orleans
I was on the faculty at Oklahoma State with Bill from 1987 to 1990. More than anything I was overwhelmingly impressed with his knowledge of marketing history and his passion for the status of the discipline. I don’t believe I’ve ever met anyone who knew more history of the discipline than did Bill, but I’m not sure most people appreciated his knowledge.
Bill spent most of his time in Tulsa and would come over to Stillwater to teach class and for occasional meetings. When the doctoral students would go up for their oral comps, Bill would always show up. I remember vividly witnessing the first of these encounters. Bill asked a student to identify the name of several psychologists (Marty Fishbein, Sigmund Freud, Richard Petty, John Cacioppo, etc.) and had the student list several articles and books written by these scholars, which the student did without effort. Then, Bill would ask the student to identify several of marketing’s historical figures, such as L.D.H. Weld, Paul Converse, Wroe Alderson, Louis Bucklin, Edmund McGarry and Arch Shaw. The poor doctoral student, unable to identify even a single one, sat in shock, as Bill explained in great detail that while he understood psychology, he knew little about marketing. To Bill, it was just wrong that marketing’s future scholars had so little contact to the historical roots of the discipline. From that point on, I tried to ensure that all my doctoral students knew and appreciated the history of our discipline.
I will always admire and respect Bill Zikmund. Indeed, he was one of our discipline’s most knowledgeable scholars, although I am nearly certain that few people appreciated the depth of his understanding, which does not surface in his textbooks.
- Jerry Goolsby, Loyola University New Orleans
The first time I met Bill Zikmund, almost 25 years ago, he was sitting at a bar in a Chicago hotel at Summer AMA. With his refreshing light sarcasm, he was "instructing" me on the finer points of "correct" AMA conference behavior. Truly, I can not blame Bill for all of my conference (mis)behaviors, but he certainly got me on the road to understanding the power of a good glass of beer and a game of pool to increase the value of the conference experience.
As the years went by and we met at one conference after another we became great "conference" buddies, playing pool and drinking beer all across the country. What Bill didn't know, (or maybe he did!) was that in those early years especially, he was teaching me a great deal more than how to enjoy a conference. His extremely practical, down-to-earth, perspective on marketing management and most importantly, the teaching of marketing, were being implanted in my slow learning brain a little more firmly each time we met. He gave me so much more than I could give back.
Thanks Bill. For the good times, the Saluki Bar, the insights, the games of pool and for being kind enough to befriend a young Ph.D. student you just happened to be seated next to in that bar. I can only imagine how much you gave to your students who could see you more often. We will all miss you, but we can never forget you.
- Paul Hensel, University of New Orleans
I taught with Bill Zikmund at Oklahoma State for eight years, and got to know him well. When I think of Zik, a smile comes to my face. Zik was fun, and you had fun when you were around him. The 50th birthday party he hosted at Wrigley Field for the love of his wife, Sybil, just before the AMA that year is a great memory, despite the bad baseball.
Zik produced at a high level, but he always made certain that there was time for relaxation. Losing a friend is always hard to reconcile, but losing one as vibrant as Zik is especially difficult. I get melancholic when I think of Zik, but there is this smile that comes to my face.
- Jim Gentry, University of Nebraska-Lincoln