203.432.5947

George Rogers Clark Professor of Management and Marketing & Director of the Center for Customer Insights

Ravi Dhar is the George Rogers Clark Professor of Management and Marketing and director of the Center for Customer Insights at the Yale School of Management. He also has an affiliated appointment as professor of psychology in the Department of Psychology, Yale University.

He is an expert in consumer behavior and branding, marketing management, and marketing strategy. His research involves using psychological and economic principles to investigate fundamental aspects about the formation of consumer preferences in order to understand and predict consumer behavior in the marketplace. In one research program, he examines how an initial choice influences subsequent choices. He is also interested in the processes of self-regulation and, specifically, the simultaneous pursuit of multiple goals. In real-life situations, people hold several different, even conflicting goals that they intend to pursue (e.g., enjoy tasty food while also wanting a slim figure, pursuing career objectives while also wanting to spend time with family and friends.) His ongoing research explores the regulation of multiple goals in multiple goal systems. His work has been mentioned in Business Week, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, USA Today, and other popular media.

He has been a visiting professor at HEC Graduate School of Management in Paris, at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, and at the Business Schools at Stanford and New York University. In addition, he has consulted to companies in a wide variety of industries, including financial services, high tech, and luxury goods.

He has written more than 40 articles and serves on the editorial boards of leading marketing journals, such as Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Marketing Science. He has led marketing seminars for senior executives in Asia, Europe, and North and South America.

Consultancies
IBM
Lucent Technologies
MFI UK
Pepsico
Praxair
Procter & Gamble
Visa
General Mills
Expert witness and consultant in legal cases

Achievements and Awards
Finalist, William O'Dell Award, 2008
Winner, William O'Dell Award, 2005
Finalist, Paul Green Award, 2004
Finalist, William O'Dell Award, 2004
INFORMS Consortium Faculty Fellow
AMA Consortium Faculty Fellow
John A. Howard AMA Doctoral Dissertation Award, 1992-1993 (Honorable Mention)
AMA Doctoral Consortium Fellow, 1991

Editorships
Editorial Board:
Journal of Consumer Psychology
Journal of Consumer Research (Associate Editor)
Journal of Marketing
Journal of Marketing Research (Associate Editor)
Marketing Letters
Marketing Science (Area Editor)

Books
Marketing Management (with R.S. Winer), Pearson Hall, 2010

Selected Articles
"Price Framing Effects on Purchase of Hedonic and Utilitarian Bundles," (with U. Khan), Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming

"Making Products Feel Special: When Metacognitive Difficulty Enhances Evaluation," (with A. Pocheptsova and A. Labroo), Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming

"Modeling the Under Reporting Bias in Panel Survey Data" (with S. Yang and Y. Zhao), Marketing Science, forthcoming

"The Effect of Decision Order on Purchase Quantity Decisions" (with I. Simonson and S.M. Nowlis), Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming

"Tradeoffs and Depletion in Choice" (with N. Novemsky, J. Wang, and R. Baumeister), Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming

"Opportunity Cost Neglect" (with S. Frederick, N. Novemsky, J. Wang, and S. Nowlis), Journal of Consumer Research, 2009

"Anticipating Adaptation to Products" (with J. Wang and N. Novemsky), Journal of Consumer Research, 2009

"Deciding Without Resources: Psychological Depletion and Choice in Context" (with O. Amir, A. Pochepstova, and R. Baumeister), Journal of Marketing Research, 2009

Customization Procedures and Customer Preferences" (with A. Valenzuela and F. Zettelmeyer), Journal of Marketing Research, 2009

"Beyond Rationality: The Content of Preferences," (with N. Novemsky), Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2008

"Of Frog Wines and Frowning Watches: Semantic Priming of Perceptual Features and Brand Evaluation" (with A. Labroo and N. Schwarz), Journal of Consumer Research, 2008

"When Thinking Beats Doing: The Role of Optimistic Expectations in Goal-Based Choice," (with Y. Zhang and A. Fishbach), Journal of Consumer Research, 2007

"Seeing The Forest Or The Trees: Implications of Construal Level Theory for Consumer Choice" (with E. Kim), Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2007

"Where There Is a Way, Is There a Will? The Effect of Future Choices on Self-Control" (with U. Khan), Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2007

"Preference Fluency in Choice" (with N. Novemsky, N. Schwarz, and I. Simonson), Journal of Marketing Research, 2007

"The Shopping Momentum Effect" (with J. Huber and U. Khan), Journal of Marketing Research, 2007

"Institutional Perspectives on Real Estate Investing" (with W. Goetzmann), The Journal of Portfolio Management, 2006

"Are Rheumatologists' Treatment Decisions Influenced by Patients Age?" (with L. Fraenkel and N. Rabidou), Rheumatology, 2006

"Subgoals as Substitutes or Complements: The Role of Goal Accessibility" (with A. Fishbach and Y. Zhang), Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 2006

"Up Close and Personal: A Cross Sectional Study of the Disposition Effect" (with N. Zhu), Management Science, 2006

"Licensing Effect in Consumer Choice" (with U. Khan), Journal of Marketing Research, 2006

"The Effects of Goal Fulfillment on Risk Preferences in Sequential Choice" (with N. Novemsky), Journal of Consumer Research, 2005

"Goals As Excuses or Guides: The Liberating Effect of Perceived Goal Progress on Choice" (with A. Fishbach), Journal of Consumer Research, 2005

Managerial Summary of Recent Research
"Making the Price of Indulgence Right" (with U. Khan), Sloan Management Review, March 30, 2011

"Column: The Persuasive Power of Opportunity Costs" by Shane Frederick, Harvard Business Review, January - February, 2011

"The Power of Customers’ Mindset" (with K. Goldsmith and J. Xu), Sloan Management Review, October 1, 2010 

"Giving Consumers License to Enjoy Luxury" (with U. Khan and S. Schmidt), Sloan Management Review, April 1, 2010

"A Mind for Brand Extensions" by By Larry Yu, Sloan Management Review, July 1, 2008

Education
PhD University of California, Berkeley, 1992
MS University of California, Berkeley, 1990
MBA Indian Institute of Management, 1987
B.Tech. Indian Institute of Technology, 1986