2023 George John Symposium

Organizers:

Prof. Mrinal Ghosh, University of Arizona

Prof. Raghunath Rao, University of Texas- Austin

Prof. Sourav Ray, University Of Guelph

Participants:

George John

Professor John received his bachelor’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India and his MBA from the University of Illinois. After earning his Ph.D. in Marketing from Northwestern, he joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin before moving to Minnesota.

He is the General Mills-Gerot Chair in Marketing at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. His interests center around distribution channels and high tech marketing. Specifically, he is interested in the strategic and efficiency aspects of governance choices in these settings.

His academic honors include an American Marketing Association award for his PhD dissertation, and his selection as a “Highly Cited Researcher” in the Business/Economics category by Thomson Reuters Web of Science.

Kelli Frias

Kelli Frias is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Kogod School of Business at American University. Her research interests include marketing strategy, interfirm relationships, market shaping, and price-quality relationships. She is an Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Fellow and recipient of multiple National Science Foundation grants and a Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas grant. She has published in journals such as Organization Science, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Macromarketing, and Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. Her teaching interests include marketing strategy, brand management, marketing and law. She has previously worked in grocery retail and labor relations.

Mrinal Ghosh

Mrinal Ghosh is the Gary M. Munsinger Chair and Professor of Marketing at the Eller College of Management, University of Arizona. Prior to joining the University of Arizona, he was a faculty at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. He obtained his Ph.D. in marketing at the University of Minnesota under the supervision of Professor George John. His research interests include substantive managerial problems in the areas of Business-to-Business Marketing, Channels of Distribution, Pricing, Salesforce Design & Management, Health Care Marketing, and Marketing Strategy.

Rehan Khan

Rehan is a graduate from IIT, Kharagpur and is currently a 2 nd year PhD candidate at DeGroote School of Business in Marketing department. Rehan joined academics with more than 25 years of professional experience where he managed huge businesses at senior management levels. On a personal front he has founded and runs a large NGO (www.bazmeurdu.org) where he organizes numerous small and large events. Extensively travelled, Rehan has covered more than 90 countries. Rehan has managed massive distribution channels on B2B side which drives his research interests in distribution channels, B2B strategy, salesforce design/governance etc. He has already taken course in micro, econometrics, IOR and marketing strategy and is exploring ideas for his thesis research.

Andreas Kraft

Andreas Kraft is an incoming Assistant Professor at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in Marketing at the McCombs School of Business, UT Austin, under the supervision of Professor Raghunath Rao.

He studies the consequences of economic frictions (e.g., bounded rationality or informational) across various settings and their effect on marketing actions. His research combines analytical economic models with various empirical tools, such as econometric models and machine learning methods.

Xiaolin Li

Dr. Xiaolin Li is an Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Department of Management at LSE. She was formerly Assistant Professor of Marketing at Naveen Jindal School of Management, University of Texas at Dallas. She is interested in empirical quantitative models in marketing, and her current research portfolio is centred on salesforce compensation, B2B marketing, and digital marketing. Methodologically, she strives to bring the most appropriate data collection and analysis techniques to bear on the problem at hand.

Raghunath Singh Rao

Raghunath Singh Rao (“Raghu”) is a Professor of Marketing at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota under Prof. George John in 2007. His research interests include pricing, salesforce management, and marketing issues arising from behavioral and informational friction.

Sourav Ray

Sourav Ray is the Lang Chair and Professor of Marketing at the Gordon S. Lang School of Business and Economics at University of Guelph, Canada. Sourav’s research interests span strategic marketing issues related to technology-intensive markets, distribution channels, and dynamic pricing. Methodologically, he uses a combination of economic modeling, scanner data analyses, surveys, and field experiments. Sourav has a PhD in Marketing from University of Minnesota, and aerospace engineering degrees from Texas A&M University and IIT Kharagpur in India. Sourav was the Michael Lee‐Chin & Family Professor in Strategic Business Studies and Professor of Marketing, at McMaster University (currently on leave).

Arash Roghani

With an educational background in engineering and business from the Sharif University of Technology and the University of Southern California, Arash joined the Eller Marketing Ph.D. program in 2020. He is interested in studying areas such as information disclosure, marketing channels, consumer search, and online reviews. He is most interested in understanding how information asymmetry about the firms’ offerings affects the strategic interactions of firms, considering consumer behavior. The primary methodology of his research is analytical modeling; moreover, he has experienced testing theories with experiments. Arash likes being with family, hiking, swimming, watching movies, reading business journals, and playing board games in his free time. He is an International Master in chess and has played in his national chess team.

Yuanchen Su

Yuanchen Su is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Marketing at the University of Minnesota. Yuanchen received her M.S. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Minnesota, and B.E. in Automation from Tsinghua University in China. Her current research focuses on gamification incentives in salesforce. She uses econometric models, structural models, and analytical models to study the effectiveness of various gamified incentive programs in salesforce. In addition, she studies how consumers’ social interactions influence firms’ decisions including pricing, product design, and inventory.

Bharat Vaishnav

Bharat is a doctoral student at the DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Canada. His research interests are in the business-to-business marketing strategy and retailing domain. In particular, he focuses on multichannel marketing and examines the role of channel integration as it relates to firm performance. He leverages econometric methods, integration of theory and his extensive industry experience to study multichannel marketing and channel integration topics that form the basis of his dissertation. Prior to doctoral studies, Bharat worked for over two decades in senior managerial roles in channel management, marketing strategy and retail management across the world. Bharat received an MBA (Marketing) from the Schulich School of Business, York University and a B.Sc. from the University of Ajmer, India. Bharat can be reached at vaishnab@mcmaster.ca

Liuyi Wang

Liuyi WANG is a second-year doctoral student in marketing at the University of Arizona. She earned her M.S. in Econometrics and Quantitative Economics from the University of Arizona, and B.Soc.Sci. in Economics from Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research interests include Health Care Marketing and Interorganizational Governance in Marketing Channels.

Dates: May 11- May 14, 2023

Website: https://georgejohnsymposium.com

Venue/Location: https://www.theresortatfredericksburg.com/ Fredericksburg, TX

This conference has been organized to honor the tremendous and continuing academic achievements of Professor George John, General Mills/Paul S. Gerot Chair in Marketing and Professor of Marketing at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. Prof. John is the quintessential professor’s professor. His exemplary passion and dedication to – mentoring of doctoral students and new faculty, working on innovative research and teaching projects, and continuing service for the marketing profession and the public, has inspired many marketing academics.

In this annual workshop, a select group of marketing scholars and faculty will interact to discuss key theoretical and methodological development in the broad domain of “Governance” and explore opportunities for collaborative research. The overarching goal is to strengthen and embed governance thinking more deeply into marketing thought and action.

At this conference, special attention will be devoted to two aspects:

The development of ideas generated by doctoral students. Doctoral students will present their ideas and will receive constructive feedback from the symposium attendees. The purpose is to provide directions on developing and implementing the idea and bring it to fruition (publication).Helping junior faculty members navigate their careers.