Berry earned bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Denver and a Ph.D. at Arizona State University.[2] A longtime professor at Texas A&M University, Berry founded the school's Center for Retailing Studies in 1982 and directed it for 18 years.[3] In 1983, Berry coined the term relationship marketing, which emphasizes the need for organizations to maintain (rather than simply acquire) customers.[4] He is a founder of the services marketing discipline.
He is a University Distinguished Professor of Marketing and Regents Professor, and holds the M. B. Zale Chair in Retailing and Marketing Leadership in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M. He has studied healthcare service improvement in association with the Mayo Clinic, Henry Ford Health, and other health systems, and as a senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.[2] Much of Berry's work has focused on service delivery in cancer care.[5]
Berry and his wife, Nancy, established the Berry-AMA Book Prize for the Best Book in Marketing for the American Marketing Association (AMA), the Mae Berry Award in Service Excellence at Mayo Clinic, and an endowed chair in Service Marketing at Mays Business School.[6] He is a past recipient of the AMA/Irwin/McGraw-Hill Distinguished Marketing Educator award, the Sheth Gold Medal in Marketing, the Paul D. Converse Award, the A&M William Wilke "Marketing for a Better World: Award, and the Presidential Professor for Teaching Award..
Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic, New York: McGraw-Hill, June 2008, 276 pp. (with Kent Seltman).
Discovering the Soul of Service: The Nine Drivers of Sustainable Business Success, New York: The Free Press, 1999, 269 pp.
On Great Service: A Framework for Action, New York: The Free Press, 1995, 292 pp.
Marketing Services: Competing Through Quality, New York: The Free Press, 1991, 212 pp. (with A. Parasuraman).
Delivering Quality Service: Balancing Customer Perceptions and Expectations, New York: The Free Press, 1990, 256 pp. (with A. Parasuraman and Valarie A. Zeithaml).