Christopher R. Plouffe Email & Phone Number

Christopher (Chris) received his Ph.D. in Marketing from the Ivey Business School at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. He also holds an MBA and an Honors Bachelor of Arts (Sociology) from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. In the first part of his career, Chris spent a number of years in the high-tech industry at Hewlett-Packard (HP), initially in marketing and public relations. He finished his career at HP in sales and business development, selling mainframe-class commercial and technical super-computers to a wide variety of industry verticals (e.g., retail; financial services; telecom).On August 1, 2020, Chris was delighted to join the Gary W. Rollins College of Business (RCOB), at the University of Tennessee – Chattanooga (UTC). Chris joins the RCOB as a Full Professor, and is proud to serve as the first-ever Rollins Endowed Chair & Professor of Sales. In this exciting new role, Chris will leverage his 20 years’ experience initiating, growing, and governing leading Sales Centers and Institutes around the country as he promotes the sales profession and sales education at UTC.Prior to joining UTC, effective Fall 2016, Chris was at the College of Business, at New Mexico State University (NMSU, 2016-2020). While at NMSU, Chris was a Full Professor and just the second-ever holder of the Robin T. Peterson Endowed Chair & Professorship in Marketing. In previous academic positions, Chris held tenured or tenure-track positions at: University of Akron (UA) in Ohio (2012-16); Florida State University (FSU – 2008-2011); Washington State University (WSU – 2005-2008); and the University of Georgia (UGA, 2001-2005).Chris’s insights have been quoted or mentioned in both Fortune and BusinessWeek. He also serves as a consultant and sales trainer with a number of leading firms including UPS, Eli Lilly, Bank of Montreal, Davey Tree Co., Bell Canada (BCE), the Home Depot, and others.A winner of multiple teaching awards (e.g., the “Student’s Award for Teaching Excellence” in 2005/06 – one of the highest teaching awards at WSU), Chris’s research has been cited nearly 3,500 times (per GoogleScholar – Spring, 2024), and primarily focuses on sales. His research has published at “A+” journals both within Marketing (Journal of Marketing; Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science) as well as other functional areas of business research: (i) MIS / Information Systems (Information Systems Research), and (ii) Management (Personnel Psychology).

Listed skills include Teaching, Leadership, Microsoft Office, Academia, and 9 others.