Dr. Benjamin Lipstein

Dr. Benjamin Lipstein, a longtime resident of both New York City and Hillsdale, NY, died with peace and dignity at his home on May 28, 2016, just weeks after his 93rd birthday. His life, fittingly punctuated by his graceful death on Memorial Day weekend, brought to a close an extraordinary post-war American success story.

Benjamin Lipstein was born in 1923, in Brooklyn New York. He graduated from Brooklyn College, and then entered the United States Army Infantry during World War II, where he received a Bronze Star - heroic achievement for his solo capture of 12 German troops. Following his service, he earned an MA and PhD from Columbia University in Economics. In August of 1945, he married his college sweetheart Rosalind Sobel. They were happily married for 67 years.

Dr Lipstein had a long and distinguished career as a statistician, an advertising executive, a University, Professor, Oppenheimer board member, and entrepreneur.

In his early career, Prof. Lipstein worked for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There, he developed a new survey research design for the National Survey of Housing in the United States. In the mid-1950's, Prof. Lipstein returned to New York to begin a career in the burgeoning field of Market Research. Lipstein pioneered the adaptation of statistical analysis to the study of brand loyalty and brand switching. He worked at Benton and Bowles, and then SSSC&B/Lintas as Worldwide Director of Market Research. During his years in advertising, Dr. Lipstein was responsible for the seminal research which led to the adoption of the four hand symbol for the Oppenheimer Mutual Fund. He joined the Board of Directors of Oppenheimer in early 1960s and remained on the Board of the Oppenheimer Mutual Funds for almost 40 years.

Lipstein continued to explore his own brand of iconoclastic market research that helped define e quantitative advertising applications and models of his time; he published many articles in professional journals such as the Harvard Business Review, the American Statistical Association Journal, The Journal of Advertising Research, and other related journals. Articles such as in "In Defense of Small Samples" were considered heretical at the time, but have since been accepted as conventional wisdom. Also at this time Dr. Lipstein was an owner of Alderson Research Laboratories, which was the primary manufacturer of the then emerging business of automobile crash dummies for the automotive industry worldwide. He retired from the advertising business and pursued an academic career at The NYU Stern School of Business, as a full professor. During his tenure at NYU, Dr. Lipstein acquired a company called National Scanner Inc., which pioneered the barcode system of documenting grocery sales.

Dr. Lipstein is survived by his children: daughter Paula Forman, and son Owen Lipstein (and their spouses Philip Forman and Maggie Fine Lipstein). In addition, he is also survived by two grandchildren: Isadora Kate Forman and Jonathan Forman (spouses Thomas Gilmartin and Laura Landry Forman), and two great grandsons - Henry and James Forman.

A graveside service will be held at Noon on Tuesday, May 31, 2016 at Williams Cemetery, 386 North Mountain Rd. Copake Falls, NY 12517.

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