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Ajay Kohli

Ajay Kohli
Isaac Stiles Hopkins Chair in Marketing
Email: Ajay_Kohli@bus.emory.edu
Phone: (404)727-5252
Fax: (404) 727-6313

Goizueta Business School
Emory University
1300 Clifton Road NE
Atlanta, Georgia 30322 USA

Biography

Professor Kohli came to the Goizueta Business School in fall 1999 from The University of Texas at Austin. He has also taught at the Harvard Business School, WHU (Koblenz School of Corporate Management), Germany, and the Norwegian School of Management, Norway.

A major stream of Dr. Kohli's research focuses on what it means for a firm to be market oriented, how market orientation can be measured, identifying why some firms are more market oriented than others, and what firms can do to become more market oriented. He has written extensively on the subject in academic journals such as the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Marketing Research. His work subsequently has been reprinted in Marketing Classics and other books. His research on market orientation with Dr. Bernard Jaworski received the Alpha Kappa Psi award for the best practice-oriented article published in the Journal of Marketing (1990). His 1993 article in Journal of Marketing (also with Dr. Jaworski) received the inaugural Sheth Foundation /JM award in 2002 for its long-term impact on the field of Marketing.

A second stream in Dr. Kohli's research focuses on sales management. In particular, he examines the influence of supervisors and co-workers on salespeople's performance and job satisfaction. His work in this area appears in the Journal of Marketing and the Journals of Marketing Research. In addition, Dr. Kohli has published work on related topics in journals such as the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and the Strategic Management Journal. He serves on the editorial boards of several journals including the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research and International Journal of Research in Marketing.

Dr. Kohli has taught at the undergraduate, graduate and executive levels. He has been recognized several times for teaching excellence, and is the recipient of the school-wide Jack G. Taylor Teaching Excellence Award at UT-Austin. He has led executive education seminars on topics such as building market-oriented organizations, differentiating commodities, and competing on customer value for firms in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Latin America.

Dr. Kohli has worked full-time in industry for six years, primarily in sales management and marketing strategy consulting. Additionally, he has consulted with or taught for organizations such as 3M, Accenture, Andersen, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Eastman Kodak, The Forum Corporation, Halliburton, IBM, and the World Bank.

Publications

  • Rethinking Customer Solutions:  From Product Bundles to Relational Processes, with Kapil Tuli and Sundar Bharadwaj, Journal of Marketing, 71, July 2007
  • A Smarter Way to Sell Commodities, with Robert S. Lurie, Harvard Business Review, 80, April 2002
  • Market Driven vs. Driving Markets, with Bernard Jaworski and Arvind Sahay, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 26, December 2000
  • Learning and Performance Orientation of Salespeople: The Role of Supervisors, with Tasadduq A. Shervani and Goutam N. Challagalla, Journal of Marketing Research 35, May 1998
  • Market Intelligence Dissemination Across Functional Boundaries, with Elliot Maltz, Journal of Marketing Research, 33, February 1996
  • Market Orientation: Antecedents and Consequences, with Bernard Jaworski, Journal of Marketing, July 1993
  • MARKOR: A Measure of Market Orientation, with Bernard J. Jaworski and Ajith Kumar, Journal of Marketing Research, 30, November 1993
  • Supervisory Feedback: Alternative Types and Their Impact on Salespeople''s Performance and Satisfaction, with Bernard Jaworski, Journal of Marketing Research, 28, May 1991
  • Market Orientation: The Construct, Research Propositions, and Managerial Implications, with Bernard Jaworski, Journal of Marketing, 54, April 1990

Areas of Specialization

  • Market orientation
  • Salesforce management
  • Commodity marketing
  • Organizing for Marketing

Achievements and Honors

  • Alpha Kappa Psi award for article in the Journal of Marketing (1990) with the biggest contribution to the practice of Marketing
  • Faculty Fellow, American Marketing Association-Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium (multiple years)
  • Sheth Award for the best paper published in the Journal of Academy of Marketing Science
  • College of Business Award for Research Excellence, The University of Texas at Austin
  • One of 67 authors with 10 or more articles in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Journal of Consumer Research during 1977-1996
  • Jack G. Taylor Teaching Excellence Award, The University of Texas at Austin (considered to be the highest award for teaching excellence in the school of Business)
  • Listed among the 100 most cited scholars in Economics and Business during the 1993-2003 decade by Thomson ISI (http://www.in-cites.com/nobel/2003-eco-top100.html).
  • The 1990 and 1993 articles on market orientation published in the Journal of Marketing are among the ten most cited articles to appear in the Journal during the 25 years spanning 1980-2004.

Professional Memberships and Activities

  • American Marketing Association
  • INFORMS
  • Academy of Marketing Science
  • Association for Consumer Research
  • Editorial review board member: Journal of Marketing
  • Editorial review board member: International Journal of Research in Marketing
  • Editorial review board member: Journal of Business Research
  • Editorial review board member: Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing
  • Editorial review board member: Asian Journal of Marketing

Selected Consulting Clients

  • 3M
  • Coca-Cola
  • Eastman Kodak
  • IBM
  • Texas Instruments

Academic Background

PhD, University of Pittsburgh
P.G.D.M (MBA), Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta
B. Tech, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur