Thought Leaders
Wharton Marketing's "Marketing Challenge"

What is it about Wharton's Marketing Department that caused Professor Dawn Iacobucci to leave a tenured position at Northwestern to join the faculty here last fall? "There is such energy here," said Iacobucci from her office in Wharton's Huntsman Hall. "People here definitely care about teaching but they are also an extremely productive group in creating new knowledge and getting it out to journals and more popular business outlets. "

Research has confirmed her perception about the productivity of Wharton's marketing faculty. A series of studies has shown that Wharton is the most published and cited marketing department in the world — whether you look at peer evaluations, publications or citations. "Any way you cut the data, Wharton is head and shoulders above the competition," she said.

Wharton's Marketing Challenge

In fact, Wharton has strengths in so many areas of marketing that it is often hard to appreciate its expertise. "One of the things that's a challenge is we're not just good in a certain niche," Iacobucci said. "If you're a school that is really good at one thing, you become known for that one thing. At Wharton, we have people who are the world's best at strategic marketing, quant people, statisticians and methodologist types, the very best behavioral people, and pioneers in marketing research."

This presents a marketing challenge for Wharton's Marketing Department, which is the third largest department at the school. "If you go down the list of every other marketing department at the top business schools, they have strengths, but at Wharton everything is covered. It is astonishing. It's not just size. There is breadth and depth."

Among the marketing faculty who teach in Wharton Executive Education programs, there are experts in competitive marketing strategy such as Jagmohan Raju, David Reibstein and George Day. There are specialists in consumer behavior and decision making such as Barbara Kahn and Wes Hutchinson, and leaders in research on retail such as Stephen Hoch (who directs Wharton's Jay H. Baker Retail Initiative). Wharton has experts such as Leonard Lodish in decision support systems to improve marketing productivity, including sales force management. There are authorities on marketing metrics such as Peter Fader and leading researchers on pricing strategy such as John Zhang.

Applying "Geeky" Research to Real Business Challenges

Iacobucci's own work is multifaceted. She conducts what she describes as "geeky" statistical and methodological research but applies this rigorous thinking to business challenges such as probing the weaknesses of customer satisfaction data. For example, one of her studies examined how cross-cultural differences affect customer satisfaction measures. She and a colleague found that some differences in satisfaction levels between countries may be more of a result of culture than clear variations in satisfaction. She also conducted research that examines differences in customer satisfaction measures across business units. This requires digging deeper into these measures than many managers go. "You have to figure out a way to model the biases of these measures to understand what is going on," she said.

She enjoys studying services marketing because it often offers more complex challenges than marketing a product such as shampoo. "What is interesting is the interpersonal component," she said. "If you don't like your experience as an airline passenger, it's probably not due to the airplane but to the person at the counter. Every encounter is slightly heterogeneous." To manage these complex processes, companies sometimes come up with simple rules such as answering the phone by the third ring. "That may have nothing to do with the quality of the experience."

Iacobucci, who is editor of the Journal of Consumer Research, is also engaged in research on what she describes as "dyadic interactions, networks and relationship marketing" — in other words, the impact of relationships on business. Her research in this area has looked at topics ranging from the benefits of close cooperative business relationships over time (she found the positive impact of relationship marketing does diminish over time) to the influence of friends on purchasing through home-party selling (social networks do influence sales). She also has explored methodological issues and written about diverse topics related to the Internet.

In addition to her work in marketing journals, Iacobucci's research has been highlighted in Harvard Business Review. She has edited several books, including Kellogg on Marketing, Kellogg on Integrated Marketing, Networks in Marketing, Handbook of Services Marketing and Management, and is co-author, with Gilbert Churchill, of the best-selling text Marketing Research.

Her diverse interests mean that she fits right in at Wharton. "From your most junior people to the most senior, people at Wharton are doing all kinds of things, from basic science to work that is in the popular business press," Iacobucci said. "I've been impressed by the people here, they are super-productive but also great to work with, and they care a lot about Wharton."

    

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