Rate My Professor Amanda Bower

Amanda Bower is the Charles C. Holbrook, Jr. ‘72 Professor of Business Administration and Head of the Department of Business Administration at Washington and Lee University. She joined the faculty in 2002 as an Assistant Professor of Marketing, advancing to Associate Professor in 2006, Full Professor in 2012, and the Holbrook Professorship in 2013. Prior to W&L, she served as Assistant Professor of Marketing at Louisiana State University from 1997 to 2001. Bower earned her Ph.D. in Marketing with a cognate in Psychology from the University of South Carolina in 1997, where her dissertation examined comparisons to idealized images in advertising. She also holds an M.S.B.A. in Marketing from the same institution (coursework completed) and a B.S.B.A. in Business Administration with a Marketing concentration from the University of Richmond in 1991, graduating cum laude.

Professor Bower specializes in marketing, teaching courses such as Marketing Management, Integrated Marketing Communications (known as AdClass), and Creative Strategic Planning. Her research interests encompass the effects of spokespeople in advertising, consumer perceptions of corporate social responsibility initiatives, product instruction compliance, and responses to product return policies. Key publications include "Return Shipping Policies of Online Retailers: Normative Assumptions and the Long-Term Consequences of Fee and Free Returns" (Journal of Marketing, 2012, with James G. Maxham III), "Explicit Donations and Inferred Endorsements: Do Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives Suggest a Nonprofit Organization Endorsement?" (Journal of Advertising, 2009, with Stacy Landreth Grau), and "Is Beauty Best? Highly Versus Normally Attractive Models in Advertising" (Journal of Advertising, 2001). Her work has appeared in Journal of Marketing, Journal of Advertising, Psychology & Marketing, and Journal of Health Communication. Bower has received numerous teaching awards, including the Award for Teaching Excellence for Untenured Faculty from LSU's E.J. Ourso College of Business Administration (2000) and the University of South Carolina Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Assistant Award (1997). She is a Senior Associate Editor at the Journal of Advertising and founded the annual AdLib conference at W&L, fostering connections between liberal arts education and advertising careers. Additionally, she led the revision of W&L’s business major to integrate liberal arts courses.