| |
|
Moving Targets
Already ranked as one of the world's top five marketing faculty, Robinson's V. Kumar continues to focus on helping companies become more profitable
by Gary W. McKillips
For some a calling comes early and success
strikes like a bolt of lightning. Wasn’t Lana
Turner discovered in a drug store at age
16? Bob Feller a pitching great at 17? Bill
Gates the founder of Microsoft at age 19?
It wasn’t exactly that way for V. Kumar (or
VK as he is more commonly known) but it
didn’t take long for his genius to become
recognized by academia, the marketing
profession and business in general.
It all began for VK as a graduate student
at the prestigious Indian Institute of
Technology in Madras. "My graduate
thesis focused on finding a use for calcium sulphate, popularly known as gypsum,
which is produced as a byproduct during
the manufacture of fertilizers," said Kumar.
After surveying the Indian market’s
potential for materials that could be made
from gypsum, VK presented a proposal for
the production of gypsum plaster board,
a product that became both popular
and profitable. Then, while en route to
his Ph.D., VK struck again. This time, said the marketing professor, "A major
oil company was able to implement a model based on my dissertation that
simplified complex decision-making related to oil drilling decisions." Another commercial
success, this breakthrough inspired VK to
form, in 1988, the Center for Marketing
Research Studies at the University of
Houston (UH), where he was serving as
an assistant professor of marketing.
VK spent 14 years at Houston, helping
businesses in the state of Texas gather
information about the marketplace and
competition while continuing to publish
in scholarly journals. "Right from the
beginning," he said, "my focus was on doing research that mattered to the
business world."
|
| |
 | | | V. Kumar and Denish Shah |
In 2001, VK took his expertise to the
University of Connecticut. Through a
five million dollar endowment from ING
Financial Services, he became the ING
Chair in Marketing and started the ING
Center for Financial Services. Again the
professor, whose reputation was growing
exponentially around the world, created
award-winning research studies and profits
for Fortune 100 companies, and produced
award-winning doctoral students.
|
It was no wonder that Robinson College
was in hot pursuit of Kumar’s talents.
“Georgia State had been showing interest
in me for over 10 years,” said VK. “I felt
the timing was right to use our newly
created body of knowledge in the domain
of brand and customer management.”
At the same time Rick Lenny, then CEO
of Hershey Foods, provided a gift to the
Robinson College to endow the Richard
and Susan Lenny Chair in Marketing.
Hence, in 2008, one of the top five
marketing professors in the world came
to Atlanta.
According to Robinson Dean H. Fenwick Huss, “When we had the chair established, we
went looking for the very top person in marketing. No one fit the bill better than VK, who is
clearly a top academic, but also a leader in terms of helping businesses address real problems
and opportunities in their operations.”
|
VK chats with Robinson Ph.D. students (from left to right)
Yashoda Bhagwat, Alan Zang and Riddi Shah.
In the far background is Hannah Kim.
|
 | |
| VK calls on his assistants to discuss the planning of
research projects in the center. Here he is in discussion with his research manager Bharath Rajan and executive assistant Amber McCain. | |
At the heart of VK’s research is a concept known as Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). In its
simplest terms, CLV is a measure of a customer’s future value to a company. VK said the
idea developed over a three- to four-year period when he and his doctoral students first
discovered that firms had a major problem in not realizing profits from customers they were
targeting in their marketing campaigns. “The problem,” said VK,” was that firms were looking
backward and not forward. "And backward metrics," continued the professor,
"correlated poorly with future buying behavior and especially future
profits."
According to VK, IBM was one of the first
to implement the approach in a field study
and reported substantial profits. Other
companies followed suit.
Although most of the work done by
VK’s Center for Excellence in Brand and
Customer Management relates to CLV, VK
and his colleagues in the center have also
conducted research to suggest optimal
pricing, sizing and distribution strategies for
firms including Procter & Gamble. They
have developed measures quantifying
the impact of a positive or negative
word-of-mouth in the social media and
have measured social media return on investment (ROI) for a retailer. In addition, VK’s
co-authored work has helped Prudential, Inc. to better understand the emotions of its
consumers therefore resulting in substantial profits for its variable annuity product.
VK had a running start before coming to Georgia State; his affiliation with GSU and
Robinson has helped both the university and the professor himself ascend in stature. Kumar
is now the holder of an unprecedented seven lifetime achievement awards - four from
the American Marketing Association (AMA) and one each from the AMA Foundation, the
Institute of Study for Business Markets at Penn State University and the Direct Marketing
Education Foundation. He has also been conferred the title of Marketing Guru by one of
his alma maters, the Indian Institute of Technology. To top it off, VK has been recognized as
a Legend in Marketing and his work will appear in the 10-volume “Legends in Marketing”
series. The series, to be released later this year will include commentaries from marketing
scholars worldwide.
In addition to his work with IBM, P&G and Prudential, Kumar has worked with many other
corporate giants including AOL, Wells Fargo & Company, AT&T Inc., Bristol-Myers, The
Coca-Cola Company, MGM Mirage, Equifax and Pitney Bowes just to name a few. He also has assisted small and start-up companies
using the same CLV methodology.
|
While research focused on solving
business problems (see “Case Targets”
for some of the center’s recent research
breakthroughs) is a primary mission of
the center, it has six other major areas of
emphasis. These include:
- Sponsoring conferences around the
world - most recently the center cohosted
the World Marketing Forum
in Accra, Ghana, and the Marketing
Dynamics Conference in Jaipur, India
- Innovation in marketing methods and
practice
- Field experiments
- Teaching: VK teaches in the part-time
MBA, Executive MBA and doctoral
programs at Robinson, and serves as a
guest lecturer around the world
- Service: The center has representatives
on boards and research centers around
the world
- Certification: The center provides
a certificate of specialization in brand and
customer management to graduate
students and executives in the US and
worldwide
To each of these objectives, VK applies a
stringent set of measurements including
the number of articles published in
scholarly publications (as of this writing
the total is a phenomenal 33 in 33 months,
or one for every month the center has
been part of the Robinson College). VK
also has published more than 160 articles
in leading marketing journals, books and
book chapters and frequently publishes in
the Harvard Business Review and Sloan
Management Review. His book titled
Managing Customers for Profit published
by the Wharton School Press is one of
the leading books used by the corporate
world to transform the company from
a product-centric to a customer-centric
orientation. VK, who also heads the
marketing doctoral program, is 10 for 10
in that area over the last 12 years; with all
of the marketing doctoral students he has
mentored winning doctoral dissertation
awards. The center has received four
grants, worth more than $100,000. VK
has been invited to speak around the
world and has been quoted by numerous
media here and abroad including the Wall
Street Journal and the BBC, where he
did a lengthy interview on the merits of
customer-friendly return policies. Finally,
the personal awards, which VK downplays
as due to individual achievements but
more as affirmation of the center’s work,
have continued to mount.
VK is also recognized as a master
teacher and has won a dozen awards for teaching excellence including one from
the Governor of Connecticut. Students
throughout the world have asked for him
to return as often as possible because of
his passion for teaching and the way he
ensures that there is learning value in every
minute of his interaction with the students.
When teaching a class, VK takes one of
his doctoral students, to ensure that these
future teachers observe how passionate he
is in his interaction with the students.
VK also serves on the editorial review
boards of many scholarly journals.
Further, he is known to give back to
his discipline by chairing conferences,
supporting scholarships, and disseminating
knowledge to students and executives in
emerging markets.
|
When asked how he and the center
stay on the cutting edge of marketing
theory and practice, VK says it’s the
“brainpower at our center in the form of
doctoral students as well as the faculty
who provide the momentum and guide
students in the execution of projects.
It is also that we are constantly looking
ahead, always looking at tomorrow.” The
center is ably supported by the assistant
director, Denish Shah, and the research
manager, Bharath Rajan. Newly recruited
marketing faculty from universities
including Columbia, Cornell and Texas also
participate in the projects executed at the
center.
Kumar’s rise to the pinnacle of marketing
success is already legendary. But given that
he is only at mid-career, it’s not hard to
believe that even greater accomplishments
are yet to come, for him and for the
Center for Excellence in Brand and
Customer Management at the Robinson
College.
|
| | |
Copyright © 2011 J. Mack Robinson College of Business/Georgia State University
|
 |
 |
 |
CONTENT 
