Suresh Ramanathan

Dean & Principal
Dr. Bala V Balachandran Distinguished Professor of Marketing & Strategy

Area of Expertise: Marketing & Strategy

Dr. Suresh Ramanathan is the Dean & Principal of Great Lakes Institute of Management. Prior to joining Great Lakes, Dr Suresh was an Associate Professor of Marketing at the prestigious University of Chicago Booth School of Business between 2002-2011, and later, Professor of Marketing for close to 8 years at the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University, holding the David R. Norcom’73 Endowed Professorship. Suresh joined the world of academia in 1997 after spending ten years in industry in India. He received his Ph.D. from NYU’s Stern School of Business in 2002. Suresh has a B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. Prior to joining the Ph.D. program at Stern, Suresh worked with Brooke Bond (now Unilever) in their tea and coffee business for three years and then moved to the world of media and advertising, where he worked with JWT, Lintas, MTV, and McCann Erickson for seven years. He was part of the core leadership team at MTV India, helping launch the channel in India in 1996, and then head of media research at McCann-Erickson India before leaving for the US.

Research

Dr. Suresh is a leading academic expert on consumer emotions and motivations. His research focuses on the role of changing emotions and goals in different domains, such as social consumption of experiences, self-control and impulsive behavior, health-related marketing and sales promotion effectiveness. He is presently investigating the role of customer engagement in brand experiences and the effectiveness of social communities in driving customer engagement. Suresh’s work is highly cited in the academic literature and has also received extensive mention in the popular press, including New York Times, CBS News, Times of India, Los Angeles Times, and Science Daily. He was till recently on the Editorial Review Boards of the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Journal of Retailing, and also serves as an ad hoc reviewer for several other journals in marketing. He has published his work in the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Psychological Science, Journal of Advertising, Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, Journal of Retailing, and Marketing Letters. In 2007, Suresh was identified by the Marketing Science Institute as a leading Emerging Scholar in Marketing, in recognition of his work and potential. He is also the recipient of the SCP-Sheth Foundation award for best doctoral dissertation proposal in 2001, and the Herman Krooss award for best doctoral dissertation at the Stern School of Business in 2002.

Dr. Suresh has deep expertise in research methods and statistics, including multivariate regression, conjoint analysis, factor analysis, multi-dimensional scaling, time series analysis (time and frequency domain), and analysis of variance, among others. He is also very familiar with neuroscientific research methods such as eye-tracking, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), facial action coding for emotion measurement, etc. His statistical expertise provides the opportunity for deep analytical dives into data, while his academic knowledge allows him to generate profound insights from the data for even the most complex research questions. Suresh has domain expertise in advertising and sales promotion effectiveness, consumer attitudes and decision-making, brand equity and brand health, and customer satisfaction and engagement.

Teaching

Dr. Suresh is also a renowned educator. He has taught at all levels in business from undergraduate to EMBA and executive education. His core teaching expertise is in Consumer Behavior and Brand Management, which he has taught for over 20 years at various institutions in the US, Europe, and Asia. He has taught Marketing Management and Advanced Marketing Strategy in full-time and professional MBA programs at Chicago Booth and Mays. He has extensive experience in executive education, and has conducted modules on customer value creation, brand equity and brand valuation for mid- and senior-level executives. Suresh has also taught a module on customer and brand value in the Executive MBA program at Mays, and has previously been a member of the visiting faculty in the EMBA program at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

Book chapter(s)

“The Dynamics of Goal Pursuit: Situation and Personality as Determinants of Goal Stickiness and Switching,” in Routledge Companion to Consumer Behavior, ed. Tina Lowrey and Michael Solomon (2017)

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

• Marina Puzakova, Hyokjin Kwak, Suresh Ramanathan, and Joseph Rocereto, “Painting your Point: The Role of Color in Firms’ Strategic Responses to Product Failures via Advertising and Marketing Communications, Journal of Advertising (December 2016)
• Adriana Madzharov, Suresh Ramanathan, and Lauren Block, "Effects of Product Color Brightness on Food Consumption," Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, special issue on The Science of Hedonistic Consumption (October 2016)
• Venkatesh Shankar, Mirella Kleijnen, Suresh Ramanathan, Ross Rizley, Steve Holland, and Shawn Morissey, “Mobile Shopper Marketing: Key Issues, Current Insights, and Future Research Directions,” Journal of Interactive Marketing, (May 2016)
• Nina Belei, Kelly Geyskens, Caroline Goukens, Suresh Ramanathan and Jos Lemmink, "The Best of Both Worlds? Effects ofAttribute-Induced Goal Conflict on Consumption of Healthy Indulgences," Journal of Marketing Research, (December 2012)
• Wilhelm Hofmann, Guido van Koningsbruggen, Wolfgang Stroebe, Suresh Ramanathan and Henk Aarts, "As Pleasure Unfolds: Hedonic Responses to Tempting Food," Psychological Science, (December 2010)
• Suresh Ramanathan and Sanjay Dhar, "The Effects of Sales Promotions on Size and Composition of the Shopping Basket: Regulatory Compatibility from Framing and Temporal Restrictions," Journal of Marketing Research, (June 2010)
• Anirban Mukhopadhyay, Jaideep Sengupta and Suresh Ramanathan, "Recalling Past Temptations: An Information-Processing View of the Dynamics of Self Control" Journal of Consumer Research, (December 2008)
• Suresh Ramanathan and Ann L. McGill, "Consuming with Others: Social Influences on Moment-to- Moment and Retrospective Evaluations of Experiences," Journal of Consumer Research (December 2007)
• Suresh Ramanathan and Patti Williams, "Immediate and Delayed Emotional Consequences of lndulgence: The Moderating Influence of Personality Type on Mixed Emotions," Journal of Consumer Research (August 2007)
• Aparna Labroo and Suresh Ramanathan, "The Influence of Experience and Sequence of Conflicting Emotions on Ad Attitudes," Journal of Consumer Research (March 2007)
• Suresh Ramanathan and Geeta Menon, "Time-Varying Effects of Chronic Hedonic Goals on Impulsive Behavior," Journal of Marketing Research, (November 2006)
• Rebecca Naylor Walker, Rajagopal Raghunathan and Suresh Ramanathan, "Promotions Spontaneously Induce a Positive Evaluative Response," Journal of Consumer Psychology (July 2006)
• Stijn Van Osselaer, Suresh Ramanathan, Margaret Campbell, Joel Cohen, Jennifer Dale, Paul Herr, Chris Janiszewski, Arie Kruglanski, Angela Lee, Stephen Read, Jay Russo and Nader Tavassoli, "Choice Based on Goals," Marketing Letters, (December 2005)
• Geeta Menon, Lauren Block and Suresh Ramanathan, "We're at as Much Risk as We're Led to Believe: Effects of Message Cues on Judgments of Risk," Journal of Consumer Research, (March 2002)

Conference(s)

Academic conference

• “Top Down, Side Up: Effect of Food Architecture on Consumption of Hedonic and Healthy Foods,” presented at European Marketing Academy Conference, Hamburg, Germany, May 2019
• “Are Attitudes Contagious? Effects of Connecting with Politically Similar and Dissimilar Others,” presented at Data, Dollars, & Votes: The Intersection of Marketing and Politics Conference, Georgetown University, Washington D.C., May 2018
• “Are Attitudes Contagious? Effects of Connecting with Politically Similar and Dissimilar Others” presented at La Londe Conference on Marketing Communications and Consumer Behavior, La Londe les Maures, France, May 2017
• “Wishful Hearing: The Effects of Motivational States on Auditory Perceptual Biases and Behavior,” presented at Association for Consumer Research, Berlin, Germany, October 2016
• "Boost the Brightness, But Turn Down the Volume: Cross-modal Compensation for Meta-Sensory Homeostasis," presented at European Marketing Academy Conference, Oslo, Norway, May 2016
• “Sinful Consumers, Saintly Brands: Why Decadently Wasteful Consumption Makes Luxury Brands Seem More Precious,” presented at European Marketing Academy Conference, Oslo, Norway, May 2016
• “Sinful Consumers, Saintly Brands: Why Decadently Wasteful Consumption Makes Luxury Brands Seem More Precious,” presented at Monaco Symposium on Luxury, Monaco, April 2016
• "Effect of Product Color Brightness on Hedonic Food Consumption," presented at Society for Consumer Psychology Conference, Vienna, Austria, June 2015
• "Boost the Brightness, But Turn Down the Volume: Cross-modal Compensation for Meta-Sensory Homeostasis," presented at Society for Consumer Psychology Conference, Vienna, Austria, June 2015
• "Dynamics of Desires in Indulgence Decisions," presented at International Convention of Psychological Science, Amsterdam, Netherlands, March 2015
• "How do Friends and Strangers Interpret Shared Experiences? Synchrony as Relationship-Bolstering Or Experience-Heightening," presented at Association for Consumer Research Conference, Chicago, October 2013
• "When More Than One Negative Emotion is Elicited: Suppressing or Expressing One Allows the Other to Rear its Ugly Head," presented at Association for Consumer Research Conference, Chicago, October 2013
• "The Best of Both Worlds: Effects of Product Color Brightness on Food Consumption," presented at Advertising and Consumer Psychology Conference, Singapore, December 2012
• "The Best of Both Worlds: Effects of Product Color Brightness on Food Consumption," presented at European Marketing Academy Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, May2012

Consulting Projects

REC Solar, Singapore/Munich, March-May 2019

Invited speech/Panel discussion

• University of Texas at San Antonio, March 2012
• University of Arkansas, March 2012
• Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, June 2012
• University of Texas at Arlington, March 2014
• Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands, December 2014
• Imperial College, London, UK, December 2014
• Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands, March 2015
• HEC Lausanne, Switzerland, November 2015
• HEC Paris, France, November 2015
• University of Cologne, Germany, May 2016
• Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai, India: Keynote Speaker December 2016
• INSEAD Business School, Fontainebleau, France, April 2017
• University of Bath, UK, June 2017

Member of Board

Member of external review panel for Hong Kong Government Research Council

Reviewer for conference/Journal

• Journal of Business Research
• Journal of Economic Psychology
• Journal of lnteractive Marketing
• Journal of Marketing Research
• Marketing Letters
• Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
• Psychological Science

Editorial Board member/Editor of Journals

• Journal of Consumer Research
• Journal of Consumer Psychology
• Journal of Retailing

Research Grants received

Co-recipient of T3 Interdisciplinary Grant for $30000 to study neural correlates of decision-making, 2017

Recipient of MSI Grant for $15,000 to study Dynamics of Social Communities,2014

Working papers

• Suresh Ramanathan, Nina Belei, Scott Davis, and Claudia Jasmand , "Topping it Down: Reversing the Unit Bias in Mixed Indulgences" (manuscript being revised for submission to Journal of Consumer Psychology)
• Shruti Koley, Caleb Warren, and Suresh Ramanathan, "How Anger Affects Consumer Decisions," (under review at Journal of Consumer Research)
• Shruti Koley, Caleb Warren, and Suresh Ramanathan, " When Does Anxiety Increase Attempts to Spend Time and Money Efficiently," (under review at Journal of Consumer Research)
• Rhonda Hadi, Lauren Block, O.H. Groth, and Suresh Ramanathan, “Cross-Modal Compensation: Sensory Discomfort Affects Consumer Preferences Across Modalities,” (manuscript under review at Journal of Consumer Research)
• Suresh Ramanathan, Joan Philips, Daniel Schill and Rita Kirk, "Are Political Opinions Contagious? An Investigation on the Effects of Seating Position and Prior Attitudes on Moment-to-Moment Evaluations During the Presidential Debates" (working paper, ready for submission to Journal of Marketing)
• Suresh Ramanathan and Wilhelm Hofmann, “Sticky Desires or Tricky Self-Control: Dynamics of Attentional Biases in Responses to Temptations,” (manuscript being prepared for submission to Journal of Experimental Psychology: General)
• Thirunillai Seshadri, Aarti Ivanic, Suresh Ramanathan, and Utpal Dholakia, “How Governance Structure Affects Customer Engagement in Social Media: Findings from a Longitudinal Field Experiment" (manuscript being prepared for submission to Journal of Marketing Research)