James R Lumpkin is the Gene Brauns Professor of Marketing at The University of Sothwestern Louisiana. He has a BSc in chemistry and an MBA in management, and received his PhD in marketing from the University of Arkansas. Before entering academe, Dr Lumpkin worked in marketing research for Phillips Petroleum Company. His primary research interests include retail patronage theory, market segmentation, and research methodology, with recent research focused in the elderly consumer. His research has been published in the Journal of Retailing, the Journal of Business Research, the Gerontologist, the Journal of Advertising Research, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Psychological Reports, and other scholarly journals.