Martijn de Jong picks up national science prize for economics

Hot on the heels of the EUR Research prize that he received on September 6, Martijn de Jong, Associate Professor of Marketing, has been awarded another accolade for his research.

The 10,000 Euro Christiaan Huygens science prize in the field of economic sciences and a bronze statue will be presented to Martijn de Jong on Thursday, 14 October for his dissertation on how to measure and compare preferences across countries using survey data.

The presentation will take place in De Oude Kerk in Voorburg. Keynote speakers will be H.R.H. Princess Máxima and dr. A.E.H.M. Wellink, president of De Nederlandsche Bank.

New methods to conduct cross-cultural survey research

De Jong has developed new methods to conduct cross-national (or cross-cultural) survey research, a complex subject because of the different measurements used across cultures and languages, some of which are not directly comparable.

Current methods have failed to solve the problem, but de Jong has developed a high-tech methodology to enable cross-national comparability and now leads the field in the psychometric and marketing literature. His work sheds much-needed light on cross-cultural consumer behaviour in an increasingly-globalised world.

He has proven to be an extremely prolific researcher whose impactful papers have appeared in the highest-ranking marketing journals. Both methodological as well as substantive issues in cross-cultural marketing are addressed in his work. For example, a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Marketing investigates the drivers of consumers’ attitudes toward global and local products using advanced cross-national methodology.

Martijn de Jong on winning the prize

On hearing the news of his award, Martijn de Jong said: “I am honoured that the Christiaan Huygens prize has been awarded to me. Globalization is a very important phenomenon. It’s crucial to have a better understanding of how companies need to deal with globalization, how consumer behaviour varies across cultures, and how to measure and compare consumer preferences across countries.

“Apart from the personal glory, I see this prize primarily as recognition of the importance of cross-cultural research in the economic sciences.”

Praise by Stijn van Osselaer and Ale Smidts

Professor of Marketing, Stijn van Osselaer specialises in consumer behaviour. He said: “Dr de Jong is a unique talent, and an absolute world-class academic in our field.”

Ale Smidts, Professor of Marketing Research: “Dr. de Jong’s research excels not just in quality but also in numbers and broad impact. The methodologies developed by Dr. de Jong have the power to greatly improve the quality of survey research across disciplines, cultures, and applications. The qualitative and quantitative excellence of Dr. de Jong’s research is further exemplified by several honours and recognitions: He is a fellow in ERIM’s Early Career Talent Programme and a recipient of an EUR Fellowship, the Tilburg University PhD Thesis Award, a Niels Stensen Foundation travel grant for his Visiting Faculty Fellowships at Columbia and NYU, the ERIM Outstanding Young Researcher Award, and an NWO VENI grant. He was also named a Marketing Science Institute Young Scholar, an honour given to only 20 to 30 young Marketing faculty around the world once every two years. Finally, he received the national Johannes Cornelis Ruigrok Award in Economics in 2009, which is awarded once every four years.”

About the Christiaan Huygens jury and prize

The Christiaan Huygens jury, appointed annually by the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW), consisted of Prof. JB Opschoor (Chairman), Prof. J. Hartog and Prof. F.C. Palm. The judges select the best dissertation of the last four years in a particular discipline from Dutch research schools and universities.

The Christiaan Huygens prize is supported each year by an enterprise or institution that holds an affinity with the relevant scientific area; this year, the prize is supported by De Nederlandsche Bank.

Christiaan Huygens was a prominent 17th century Dutch mathematician, astronomer, physicist and horologist. The science prize named after him is a tax free sum of €10,000, a certificate and a bronze statue. The prize has been awarded annually since 1998 to researchers whose recently-defended dissertation has made a major socially relevant contribution to science. The prize also aims to facilitate contacts between universities and industry and positively influence the number of students entering the five scientific areas developed by the pioneering work of Huygens:

• Actuarial and econometrics;
• Theoretical and Applied Physics; 
• Space Science; 
• Information and Communication Technology; 
• Economics.

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