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.

• 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 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.
• 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

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 using conjoint analysis to understand consumer perceptions including consumer reactions to various kinds of pricing. He collaborates with TRC to understand this issue in greater detail through the development of new modeling approaches.

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 projects executed by the YCCI. Our Chief Research Officer Rajan Sambandam works as a Knowledge Partner to 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 among other things he has developed a model (called the Adaptive Self-Explicated model) that can compete effectively with methods like Max-Diff. He is a frequent presenter at TRC conferences and his graduate students have listened to multiple TRC lectures.

Vikas Mittal, Rice University
Vikas is the J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Marketing at Rice University. For nearly two decades 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.

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.

Angelika Dimoka, Temple University
Angelika is an Assistant Professor of Marketing and Director of the Center for Neural Decision Making a the Fox School of Business in Temple University. With a doctorate in biomedical engineering she brings a unique perspective to marketing and has run a cutting edge program in neuroscience at Temple University.

Vicki Morwitz, New York University
Vicki is President of the Society of Consumer Psychology and Harvey Golub Professor of Business Leadership at the Stern School of Business at New York University. She is a leading expert in studying the impact of intentions on behaviors and thus has much to offer to survey researchers. She has presented at TRC conferences and is currently working with us on multiple projects.

K. Sudhir, Yale University
Sudhir is James L. Frank '32 Professor of Marketing & Director of the China India Consumer Insights program at Yale University School of Management. 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.

Josh Eliashberg, Wharton School of Business
Josh is the Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing and Operations and Information Management at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the leading authority on applying modeling rigor to understanding the box office success of movies and has developed innovative approaches to predict movie success.

David Bell, Wharton School of Business
David is Xinmei Zhang and Yongge Dai 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.

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 colleagues Rajan Sambandam and Pankaj Kumar. 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.