GTDC 'Channel Health Index' Receives Business Research Award.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- The Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC), an international consortium of leading IT distributors with more than $80 billion in total revenue, today announced that a comprehensive research project it co-sponsored recently received a prestigious market-research honor, the Silver Medal in the Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM) 2006 Academic-Practitioner Challenge. The awards were presented during ISBM's Second Biennial Academic Conference held at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, in an event entitled "Thinking Big, Thinking Different: Contributions and Challenges in B-to-B Research."

The study - The Channel Health Index: A Metric to Capture the Motivation of Business-to-Business Channels of Distribution - was created to provide a new metric for tracking resellers' motivation to support a manufacturer's brand, enabling better channel management at company and industry levels. It was presented at the GTDC's 2005 Vendor Summit by researchers David I. Gilliland, Colorado State University and Aston University; and Stephen Keysuk Kim, Iowa State University.

ISBM, headquartered at Penn State's Smeal College of Business, is a research center global in scope devoted to improving the practice of business marketing by its 60 corporate members, and promoting academic study in the field worldwide.

"It's certainly gratifying to receive an honor of this distinction," commented Tim Curran, CEO of the GTDC and co-author of the study. "The most significant recognition, however, comes from the distributors and vendors who benefited from the study. It was very well received by these audiences. We will continue to advance the GTDC's mission through compelling research, activities and events that provide unique industry value."

About The Global Technology Distribution Council

The Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) is a worldwide industry association dedicated to defining and promoting the role of wholesale distribution in a successful and healthy information technology channel. The Council is comprised of the computer industry's top wholesale distributors dedicated to serving "the channel," a network of skilled value-added resellers and retail stores focused on providing hardware, software, and services to businesses and consumers around the globe.