Vithala Rao

Vithala R. Rao is the Deane Malott Professor of Management and professor of marketing and quantitative methods at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. He holds master''s degrees in mathematical statistics from the University of Bombay and in sociology from the University of Michigan, and a PhD in applied economics and marketing from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

He has published over 135 papers on several topics including conjoint analysis and multidimensional scaling, pricing, bundle design, brand equity, market structure, corporate acquisition, and linking branding strategies to financial performance. His current work includes competitive bundling, diffusion of attribute information for new products, and trade promotions. His papers have appeared in the Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Management Science, Journal of Marketing, and Journal of Consumer Research, among others.

Professor Rao received Johnson''s 2000-01 Faculty Research Award and the 2005 Robert D. Buzzell Award for the Best Paper by the Marketing Science Institute. He recently received the 2008 Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Research Award presented by the American Marketing Association and the American Marketing Association Foundation recognizing his "outstanding leadership and sustained impact on advancing the evolving profession of marketing research over an extended period of time." He was elected the ISMS Fellow in 2012. He was inducted as an AMA Fellow in February 2016. Technometrics recognized his book, Applied Conjoint Analysis, in 2016. He was awarded the 2017 Churchill Award by the American Marketing Association''s Marketing Research Special Interest Group for his lifetime contributions in marketing research.

In addition to his 2004 book, Applied Conjoint Analysis, he is the co-author of Applied Multidimensional Scaling, Decision Criteria for New Product Acceptance and Success, and Analysis for Strategic Marketing. He also edited a volume of research papers entitled, Handbook of Pricing Research in Marketing.

He serves on the editorial boards of Customer Needs and Solutions (as a senior editor), Journal of Marketing (as a reviewer), Journal of Marketing Research (as a reviewer), and Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing (as a reviewer). He is also an ad hoc reviewer for several journals, including Management Science. He was the chair of the Marketing Strategy Committee of INFORMS in 2010-12.

Professor Rao has taught at several other schools, including the Fuqua School of Business of Duke University, Columbia Graduate School of Business, and the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

Selected Publications

• Rao, Vithala; Yu, Yu; Umashankar, Nita. "Anticipated vs. Actual Synergy in Merger Partner Selection and Post-Merger Innovation" Marketing Science. 35.6 (2016): 934-952
• Rao, Vithala; Russell, Gary; Bhargava, Hemant; Cooke, Alan; Derdenger, Tim; Kim, Hwang; Kumar, Nanda; Levin, Irwin; Ma, Yu; Mehta, Nitin; Pracejus, John; Venkatesh, R. "Emerging Trends in Product Bundling: Investigating Consumer Choice and Firm Behavior" Customer Needs and Solutions (forthcoming).
• Yu, Yu; Umashankar, Nita; Rao, Vithala. "Choosing the Right Target: Relative Preferences for Resource Similarity and Complementarity in Acquisition Choice" Strategic Management Journal. 37.8 (2016): 1808-1825
• Narayan, Vishal; Rao, Vithala; Sudhir, K. "Early Adoption of Modern Grocery Retail in an Emerging Market: Evidence from India" Marketing Science. 34.6 (2015): 825-842
• Chung, Jaihak; Rao, Vithala. "A General Consumer Preference Model for Experience Products: Application to Internet Recommendation Services" Journal of Marketing Research. 49.3 (2012): 289-305
• Gomez, Miguel; Rao, Vithala; McLaughlin, Edward. "Empirical Analysis of Budget and Allocation of Trade Promotions in the U.S. Supermarket Industry" Journal of Marketing Research. 44.3 (2007): 410-424
• Rao, Vithala; Agarwal, Manoj; Dahlhoff, Denise. "How Is Manifest Branding Strategy Related to the Intangible Value of a Corporation?" Journal of Marketing. 68.4 (2004): 126-141
• Rao, Vithala. "Conjoint Analysis" The History of Marketing Science, Ed. Russell Winer, Ed. Scott Neslin. World Scientific - Now Publishers Series in Business. (2014): 47-76
• Bradlow, Eric; Rao, Vithala. "A Hierarchical Bayes Model for Assortment Choice" Journal of Marketing Research. 37.2 (2000): 259-268

Awards and Honors

• Fellow (2012) INFORMS Society for Marketing Science (ISMS)
• Churchill Award (2017) AMA MRSIG
• AMA Fellow (2016) American Marketing Association
• 2016 Ziegel Award (2016) Technometrics, ASA
• Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Research Award (2008) American Marketing Association and the American Marketing Association Foundation

Academic Degrees

• Ph D University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School, 1970
• MA University of Michigan, 1962
• MSc University of Bombay, 1956
• BSc Andhra University, 1954