Nik Dholakia

Nikhilesh Dholakia is an independent author, global researcher and consultant based in Narragansett, Rhode Island. He is also the founding co-editor of 'Markets, Globalization & Development Review' (MGDR). For 34 years, Nikhilesh Dholakia (colloquially known as "Nik Dholakia") worked as Professor in the College of Business Administration at the University of Rhode Island (URI). Before that, he was associated with Kansas State University, Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad (IIMA), Indian Institute of Management - Calcutta, and (as a doctoral researcher) with Northwestern University (Kellogg School).

In the b-school settings, Nik's work has often provided a critical perspective into things - a perspective that often makes mainstream b-school folks squirm, draw blank stares, appear puzzled, act in exasperation, or become downright angry. Adventurous readers, however, discover sharp critical insights. Nik would like readers to love his work, or hate his work - but he is mortified by the third prospect of people ignoring his work, not because it is boring, but because it does not fit into the neat (banal?) pigeonholes of b-school research categories.

Besides URI, Nik has also taught at University of Illinois at Chicago, Kansas State University, and Indian Institutes of Management at Ahmedabad and Calcutta. He has been a visiting faculty at Northwestern University's Kellogg School, Chuo University in Japan, Arizona State University West, University of Southern Denmark (Odense) in Denmark, Aalto University (Helsinki) School of Economics and Business, Le Havre University in France, Norwegian Institute for Market Research, and Aalborg University in Denmark; and an Erskine Fellow at the University of Christchurch, New Zealand.

Nik Dholakia's research deals with the intersections of globalization, technology, innovation, market processes, and consumer culture. He has worked on projects on Organization Buying of Telecom Systems, Global Telecom Markets, Information Technology in the Home, Technology Adoption and Diffusion Processes, Global Development of Markets for Addressable Television Systems, Privacy Issues on the Internet, Public Policy towards Telecommunications, Asian Road-based Transport, Metaverse Identities, Globalization of Indian Businesses, Global Transportation Networks & Supply Chains, Retailing in India and Asia, and Social Media.

Among his books are Essentials of New Product Management (Prentice-Hall, 1987), Consumption and Marketing: Macro Dimensions (South-Western, 1996), New Infotainment Technologies in the Home: Demand-Side Perspectives (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996), Consuming People: From Political Economy to Theaters of Consumption (Routledge, 1998), Worldwide E-Commerce and Online Marketing: Watching the Evolution (Quorum, 2002), M-commerce: Global Experiences and Perspectives (Idea Group Publishing, 2006), and Toward a Metatheory of Economic Bubbles: Socio-Political and Cultural Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Articles authored by him have appeared in, among other places, Journal of International Management, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Management, Marketing Theory, Consumption Markets & Culture, Columbia Journal of World Business, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Journal of Macromarketing, Qualitative Market Research, Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organizations, Electronic Markets and Information & Organization.

Nik Dholakia has been a co-winner of the Charles Slater award for the Journal of Macromarketing. He has also chaired doctoral dissertations that have won the MSI/Clayton and ACR/Sheth Foundation awards.

Nik holds a B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology at Delhi (IIT-Delhi), an MBA from Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad (IIMA), and a Ph.D. in Marketing from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University.