On March 18, 2021, the “Institut für Marktorientierte Unternehmensführung” (IMU) at the University of Mannheim held its first digital spring conference with the theme "Turning Data into Insights - Customer Engagement in the Digital Age".

Subsequently to insightful presentations from both academia and business practice, the IMU presented the “IMU Research for Practice Award” for scientifically excellent dissertations with high practical relevance for market-oriented corporate management. Since the spring conference could not take place last year, the awarding of the prize to last year's winner Dr. Jonas Schmidt, research fellow at the Chair of Marketing Management (IfM), was first made up for. In his presentation, Dr. Schmidt presented the main findings of his dissertation on “Accurately measuring willingness to pay: Analyses of the hypothetical bias” and particularly emphasized the need to define consumers' willingness to pay as early as possible in the product development process. Moreover, his dissertation vividly demonstrates that, contrary to the prevailing opinion in research, direct measurements of consumers' willingness to pay, which can be implemented with less effort than complex, indirect approaches, have higher predictive accuracy. Thus, his work offers added value for both research and business practice.

We cordially congratulate Jonas Schmidt on this outstanding achievement.