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INTEREST CATEGORY: MARKETING RESEARCH
POSTING TYPE: Awards

Posted by: P. K. Kannan

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ÂÜÀòÉç¹ÙÍø MR SIG

Kannan Srinivasan and Birger Wernerfelt selected as the recipients of the 2025 Gilbert A. Churchill Award

The Marketing Research SIG Award Committee has selected Kannan Srinivasan and Birger Wernerfelt as the recipients of the 2025 Churchill Award for Lifetime Contributions to Marketing Research.

The Churchill award recognizes researchers’ contribution to marketing research including new methodologies, seminal publications, books, awards, and other notable contributions. A panel of world-renowned marketing scholars – all past winners of the Churchill award – selected the winners.

Congratulations to Professor Kannan Srinivasan and Professor Birger Wernerfelt!

Kannan Srinivasan is the H.J. Heinz II Professor of Management, Marketing and Business Technology at Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA, MBA from Xavier School of Management, India and B.E. from University of Madras. Professor Srinivasan has made wide-ranging and impactful contributions to marketing research, particularly at the intersection of marketing analytics, consumer behavior, digital platforms, and technology-driven business models. His work has advanced how researchers and practitioners understand pricing strategy, consumer choice, and firm decision-making in competitive and information-rich environments.  One of his core contributions lies in modeling consumer decision-making under uncertainty. His research on consideration set formation, price sensitivity, and brand switching behavior has been foundational in the development of structural models that incorporate heterogeneity and dynamic behavior. In the digital domain, Srinivasan has been a pioneer in clickstream modeling, online auction dynamics, platform-based retailing, and sponsored search advertising, using large-scale data and econometric modeling to unpack consumer and firm interactions. His work on crowdsourcing, review analytics, and algorithmic fairness has pushed the boundaries of marketing’s role in the AI age, including studies on Airbnb that investigate image aesthetics, host behavior, and racial economic inequality. The selection committee noted that Srinivasan’s work is marked by methodological rigor, managerial relevance, and consistent innovation, making him one of the leading voices in empirical and analytical marketing science.

Birger Wernerfelt is the J. C. Penney Professor of Management Emeritus at MIT Sloan School of Management. He received his D.B.A. from Harvard University, and BA and MA from University of Copenhagen. Professor Wernerfelt has made foundational contributions to marketing and marketing research, as well as to the adjacent disciplines of strategy and economics. Most of his work in marketing lies at the intersection of strategy, consumer behavior, and firm-level decision-making. Notably, Wernerfelt’s influential research on customer complaint management (with Claes Fornell) introduced theoretical frameworks for defensive marketing strategies that mitigate churn and increase retention. He has also significantly contributed to our understanding of brand loyalty, umbrella branding, and consumer consideration sets, often leveraging formal models to analyze the implications of marketing decisions under uncertainty. The selection also noted Wernerfelt’s seminal contribution to strategy and management in general through the development of the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, first articulated in his 1984 Strategic Management Journal paper. This work reshaped the field by proposing that firms’ internal resources, rather than market positioning alone, are central to gaining and sustaining competitive advantage. The RBV remains one of the most cited and influential ideas in management. Wernerfelt’s work in economics is mostly about the scope of the firm and is related to the RBV.

Professors Kannan Srinivasan and Birger Wernerfelt will be recognized at the MR SIG reception and award ceremony at the 2025 Summer ÂÜÀòÉç¹ÙÍø Conference in Chicago, IL. MR SIG welcomes you to the reception to be held on August 23^rd at 5:30 pm.

Previous Churchill Award Winners

2024 – Praveen Kopalle, Dartmouth College
2023 – Greg Allenby, The Ohio State University
2022 – Christine Moorman, Duke University
2021 – Harald van Heerde, University of New South Wales
2020 – Josh Eliashberg, University of Pennsylvania
2019 – Gerard J. Tellis, University of Southern California
2018 – Steven M. Shugan, University of Florida
2017 – Vithala R. Rao, Cornell University
2016 – Pradeep Chintagunta, University of Chicago
2015 – J.B. Steenkamp, University of North Carolina
2014 – Joel Huber, Duke University
2013 – A. Parasuraman, University of Miami
2012 – Gary Lilien, Pennsylvania State University
2011 – John R. Hauser, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2010 – Robert Leone, Texas Christian University
2009 – V. Kumar, Georgia State University
2008 – Michel Wedel, University of Maryland
2007 – Dominique Hanssens, University of California, Los Angeles
2005 – Don Lehmann, Columbia University
2004 – J. Paul Peter, University of Wisconsin
2003 – Richard P. Bagozzi, Rice University
2002 – Frank Bass, University of Texas, Dallas
2001 – Donald Morrison, University of California, Los Angeles
2000 – Roland Rust, Vanderbilt University
1999 – Vijay Mahajan, University of Texas, Austin
1998 – V. Seenu Srinivasan, Stanford University
1997 – Bill Perreault, University of North Carolina
1996 – Paul Green, University of Pennsylvania