Dr. Ira R. Weiss, dean of the College of Management at North Carolina State University, announced that Dr. Stacy Wood is joining the college’s Department of Business Management this fall as the J. Lloyd Langdon Distinguished Professor of Marketing. The appointment is expected to be approved by the NC State University Board of Trustees at its meeting on April 15.

Wood is coming to NC State from the University of South Carolina (USC) where she has been on the faculty since 1998 and currently serves as Moore Research Fellow and associate professor of marketing in the Darla Moore School of Business. Wood received her Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Florida in 1998. During her time at USC, she has won the university’s top undergraduate teaching prize, the Mungo Award, and the business school’s top teaching award, the Alfred G. Smith Award, and teaching awards for MBA classes at both the University of South Carolina and Duke University.

Wood’s key areas of research focus on consumer innovation, new product design and adoption, and consumer response to technology advances. She has been published in the leading marketing research journals, and received awards for her research, including the MSI-Paul H. Root Award for best paper in the Journal of Marketing in 1997, the Louis W. Stern Award for best paper in marketing and channels from the American Marketing Association in 2005, honorable mention for the American Marketing Association’s Tech SIG for best paper in technology and innovation in 2008, and runner-up for the Park Prize for outstanding contribution to consumer psychology in 2010.

Wood also founded and serves as the director of the USC Center for Neuroeconomic Research. The research center reflects Wood’s interest in the emerging field of neuroeconomic research, which uses brain imaging technologies to observe which parts of the brain are engaged during decision-making processes.

Neuroeconomic research is “still a fledgling field,” she said, “but I feel it will become more interesting and insightful as brain scan technology improves together with our ability to design sophisticated experimental protocols,” Wood said. The data are expected to help researchers better understand how people make decisions, with an aim to helping individuals improve the choices they make in a wide range of activities, including buying consumer goods, selecting health care options, adopting innovation, or accepting changes in the workplace.

Wood plans to establish an interdisciplinary research and learning center focused more broadly on consumer innovation at the NC State College of Management. This center will bring together cutting-edge academic research in consumer behavior and innovation management with companies that excel in innovation and demonstrate a strong focus on consumer understanding. Wood said, “When a bridge is built between research and the real world, both are lifted up.”

The Langdon Professorship was established in the NC State College of Management in 1999 by Lloyd and Madelyn Langdon to provide financial support for a newly recruited faculty member in the area of marketing. The endowed professorship helps provide the named professor with resources for research, graduate assistantships, professional development, travel, scholarly publications and other research-related expenditures.

Lloyd Langdon is a 1940 graduate of NC State with a bachelor’s degree in Agriculture and Life Sciences. He retired as president of PET Dairy, Inc., in 1979 and as chairman of the board of directors of the Hamilton Bank of Upper East Tennessee in 1984. Langdon is a retired lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve, former member of the NC State Alumni Association Board of Directors and current member of the NC State Lifetime Giving Societies and the Pullen Society.