Marketing Matters

Professor Barbara Kahn is an internationally recognized expert on marketing issues whose research provides managers with a better understanding of the consumer choice process. She co-authored Grocery Revolution: The New Focus on the Consumer, a book that chronicled the dramatically changing supermarket industry and outlined how consumers make choices within the supermarket. In 2013, she published Global Brand Power: Leveraging Branding for Long-Term Growth.

Americus Reed, II is the Whitney M. Young Jr., Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he has served on faculty since 2000. An avid fitness enthusiast, part time drummer and tireless educator, Americus’ primary research and consulting areas are in brand equity and Identity Loyalty – the study of creating and fostering “brand communities” that transcend the utilitarian aspects of products to actualize iconic levels of symbolic identity and self-expression; connect to deep levels of emotional and social affiliation, and cultivate lifelong relationships with intermediate customers and end consumers. In 2005, his academic work in this area received honorable mention for the prestigious Robert Ferber Award for academic impact in the Journal of Consumer Research (JCR) and in 2009 he received JCR’s Best Paper Award. Americus describes the power of branding in this TEDx conversation. He has authored more than 50 articles, book chapters and cases on the topic. He has been featured on CNN, CNBC, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, New York Times, NPR and the Hidden Brain Podcast. He teaches customer analysis, branding and consumer psychology to undergraduate, graduate, doctoral and executive students.