(Posted November 23, 2009)

HUNTINGDON, Pa. -- These days, people can do almost anything with their cell phones but use them to drive to work. A Juniata College information technology professor will illuminate the rapidly developing market for cell phone commerce in the lecture "Identifying and Developing the Elusive M-Commerce Customer" at 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, Dec. 1 in Neff Lecture Hall in the von Liebig Center for Science on the Juniata campus.

The lecture, by Marlene Burkhardt, professor of information technology and business administration, is free and open to the public. The Bookend Lecture series features afternoon lectures each month by Juniata College faculty.

Burkhardt teaches several courses on cyber marketing and E-business and uses the term "M-Commerce," or mobile commerce, to describe the use of cell phones to make purchases. Her talk will focus on how marketers are scrambling to develop this new purchasing medium.

The emerging market for mobile commerce is still relatively new and the market in the United States has so far been reluctant to make purchases on cell phones. Burkhardt will outline a variety of independent variables that can affect m-commerce, including, social networking, technical expertise and consumer attitudes related to cell phone use, and Internet and retail purchasing. She also will discuss which of these variables have the strongest potential to affect m-commerce.

Burkhardt came to Juniata in 2002 as associate professor of business and information technology. She earned a bachelor's degree in psychology and philosophy from Wilkes College in 1980. She went on to earn a master's degree in administration from the University of Maryland in 1982 and earned a doctorate in organizational theory and behavior from Penn State University in 1990.

She teaches courses on cyber-marketing, branding and Innovations for Industry, a course in which students work with local busnesses on IT projects.

Before joining Juniata's faculty, she worked as a full-time business consultant from 1998 to 2002 as president of Nittany Research, a firm specializing in organizational survey development and research. She started her academic career as the Anheuser-Busch Assistant Professor of Management at the Wharton School of Business and Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, a position she held from 1990 to 1997.

Her research has been published in academic journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Harvard Business School Press and Administrative Science Quarterly. She received the University of Pennsylvania Junior Faculty Award in 1992.




Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.