Günter Hitsch

Günter J. Hitsch is the Kilts Family Professor of Marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

He studies quantitative marketing and industrial organization. His research interests include dynamic models of firm and consumer decision-making with a specific focus on advertising, pricing, sequential learning and experimentation, and intertemporal consumer choice. His research also focuses on the application of causal inference and machine learning to applications that include optimal customer-targeting and pricing. His research aims to provide generalizable results that apply beyond specific case studies and serve as inputs for both the decision-making of marketing practitioners and academic research.

Hitsch is a Co-Editor of the Journal of Quantitative Marketing and Economics and an Associate Editor at Marketing Science and Management Science. His research has been published in the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Journal of Quantitative Marketing and Economics, Management Science, Marketing Science, and the RAND Journal of Economics.

He earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Vienna in 1995, master's degrees in economics in 1997 and 1998, and a PhD in economics in 2001 from Yale University. He joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 2001.

Hitsch is an avid skier, and during his free time he enjoys chocolate, literature, and classical music. He wants his students to learn that "good marketing isn't fluffy."

Research Interests

Quantitative marketing and industrial organization; empirical models of consumer choice and competition; economics and marketing of new products; economics of dating and marriage markets.

Publications

• With Jean-Pierre Dubé and Peter E. Rossi, “State Dependence and Alternative Explanations for Consumer Inertia,” RAND Journal of Economics, 41 (3) (2010).

• With Jean-Pierre Dubé and Pradeep Chintagunta, “Tipping and Concentration in Markets with Indirect Network Effects,” Marketing Science, 29 (2) (2010).

• With Ali Hortaçsu and Dan Ariely, “Matching and Sorting in Online Dating Markets,” American Economic Review, 100 (1) (2010).

• With Jean-Pierre Dubé and Peter E. Rossi, "Do Switching Costs Make Markets Less Competitive?," Journal of Marketing Research, 46 (4) (2009).

• "An Empirical Model of Optimal Dynamic Product Launch and Exit Under Demand Uncertainty," Marketing Science, 25 (1) (2006).