TRC

Bringing academics and practitioners together

There's good work going on in the Universities. But business researchers rarely have the time to read journals, and faculty-initiated research doesn't often match up with the needs of business end-users who want their information targeted and fast. The end result is that academics and practitioners don't connect as often as they should.

It doesn't have to be that way. At TRC we're committed to bridging the divide between these two worlds, and to bringing new developments in the field of marketing science to bear on real-world business problems.

• By demonstrating market research ROI. TRC's partnered with Vikas Mittal, a leading expert in the field of satisfaction and loyalty research, to connect the dots between customer perceptions and positive business outcomes such as churn, revenue, and profits. We'll help you uncover business-critical improvement areas and show how research contributes to the bottom line.

• Through academic-practitioner events. We've worked closely with the Yale Center for Customer Insights, and our conferences provide opportunities for practitioners to learn about the latest developments in research, and to engage directly with academics who are moving the science of research forward.

• By reaching out to future marketers. We've worked closely with the faculty and students at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Management to organize their on-campus Market Research Symposium. And we're frequent guest lecturers - at Rice, Yale, Columbia, Wharton, and other schools.

• By working directly with academics on their projects. We're up to date on the latest research because we're helping to conduct it. Learn more about our collaborators and the work they're doing in the "Academic Friends" section below.

Academic Friends

David Bell, Wharton School of Business
David is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. While his background is in econometric modeling, more recently he has explored web commerce issues. In particular, he has been able to shine light on the impact of word of mouth effects on online sales and the impact of free shipping on online repeat purchases. Currently he is exploring issues related to social networking.

Drazen Prelec, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Drazen is the Digital Equipment Corporation Professor of Management at the Sloan School of Management at MIT. Among various honors he has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (Albert Einstein's home in the U.S.). He is a pioneer in the area of truth telling and has developed an approach (called the Bayesian Truth Serum) aimed at identifying truthful responses even in subjective situations where objective truth is unknowable. His current interests center on the use of neuroscience for decision-making.

Ravi Dhar, Yale University
Ravi is the George Rogers Clark Professor of Management and Marketing and the Director of the Yale Center for Customer Insights at Yale University. He is a leading expert on consumer behavior and branding and has collaborated with TRC for various projects executed by the YCCI.

Oded Netzer, Columbia University
Oded is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Columbia University. Preference measurement is a particular strength of his and he has developed a model (called the Adaptive Self-Explicated model) that can compete effectively with conjoint analysis. He collaborates with TRC on a version of that model to get enhanced information from ranking data. He is currently working with TRC on understanding the financial implications of green issues.

Vikas Mittal, Rice University
Vikas is the J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Marketing at Rice University. For more than a decade he has conducted research in customer satisfaction and loyalty, the inherent non-linearities and asymmetries in those relationships and their impact on firm financial performance. He is very adept at bridging the gap between academia and practice and in fact was employed by TRC at one time.

Brian Ratchford, University of Texas
Brian is the Charles and Nancy Davidson Distinguished Professor of Marketing at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is one of the pre-eminent experts on consumer information search processes and early mentor to our Chief Research Officer Rajan Sambandam. Recently he has been studying the impact of the Internet on consumer search strategies.

Jiwoong Shin, Yale University
Jiwoong is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Yale University. While his work has focused on retail competition and marketing strategy, more recently he has turned his attention to branding and advertising. His graduate marketing research students have gained practitioner perspective from TRC presentations. He also gets an honorable mention in the book Predictably Irrational.

Paul Dholakia, Rice University
Paul is the William S. Mackey Jr., and Verne F. Simons Distinguished Associate Professor of Management at Rice University. Paul's research on the mere measurement effect has led to the rather attractive conclusion that the very act of conducting customer satisfaction research can increase customer satisfaction. We are currently working with him to extend the validity of his findings. Paul is a particularly dynamic conference presenter.

Raghu Iyengar, Wharton School of Business
Raghu is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His specific expertise is in understanding consumer perceptions to non-linear pricing schemes. He has used the conjoint framework to understand how two-part pricing (fixed and variable price) can be optimally designed by firms. He collaborates with TRC to understand this issue in greater detail through the development of new modeling approaches.

K. Sudhir, Yale University
Sudhir is a Professor of Marketing and the Director of the China India Consumer Insights program at Yale University. As one of the best model builders in his area, he has used his skills in econometric modeling to understand marketing issues in a variety of industries. More recently he has used his skills to focus on the giants of Asia and their consumer consumption and decision making issues.

Andrew Perkins, Rice University
Andrew is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Rice University. His area of expertise is Implicit Attitudes: research that focuses on the biases people possess without actually being aware of them. He uses a unique measurement tool (called the Implicit Attitude Test) to understand these issues. We have provided him with plenty of data to support his efforts.

Raj Echambadi, University of Illinois
Raj is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Central Florida. His areas of expertise are in customer satisfaction, consideration sets and loyalty modeling. Of late he has been using the new methodology of response surface modeling to understand the impact of product and service satisfaction on product recommendation. He is currently working with TRC to understand the impact of intentions on behavior.

Richard "Randy" Batsell, Rice University
Randy is the Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Associate Professor and Chairman of the Marketing Department at Rice University. His recent work on market structuring and competition has produced some unique insights into the nature of political contests. We were collaborating with him to apply it to the 2008 Presidential primaries.