Shankar-Spiegel Dissertation Award

Founded by Venkatesh (Venky) Shankar, Professor of Marketing and Ford Chair in Marketing & E-Commerce at the Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, and the late Ted Spiegel, Professor Emeritus of Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, the Shankar-Spiegel Award for “Best Dissertation Proposal in Direct/Interactive Marketing” is presented annually at the Interactive Marketing Research Conference.

SHANKAR-SPIEGEL AWARD — Best Dissertation Proposal in Direct/Interactive/Digital Marketing

Announcement of Winners

Malika Korganbekova, Ph.D. student at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University has been adjudged the Winner of the 2022 Shankar-Spiegel Award for the best dissertation proposal in Direct/Interactive/Digital Marketing. Her proposal is entitled “Balancing User Privacy and Personalization.” Dr. Brett Gordon is her dissertation chair.

George (Zhida) Gui, Ph.D. student at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University has been selected as the Runner Up for the 2022 Shankar-Spiegel Award for the best dissertation proposal in Direct/Interactive/Digital Marketing. His proposal is entitled “Designing Promises with Reference-Dependent Customers.” Dr. Navdeep Sahni and Dr. Harikesh Nair are his dissertation co-chairs.

Congratulations to the winner, runner up, and their dissertation chairs!!

Shankar-Spiegel Winners

Sibel Sozuer Zorlu

2020 Recipient
Columbia Business School

Piyush Anand

2019 Recipient
Cornell University

Unnati Narang

2018 Recipient
UMays Business School, Texas A&M University

Sibel Sozuer Zorlu (Columbia Business School) won the Shankar-Spiegel Dissertation Award for her dissertation proposal entitled “A Recipe For Creative Recipes.” The winning proposal was chaired by Oded Netzer, the Arthur J. Samberg Professor of Business at Columbia Business School.

Sibel Sozuer Zorlu is a doctoral candidate in Marketing at the Columbia Business School. Her research examines what makes an idea creative in the context of food recipes. She leverages a machine learning embedding model to model the novelty of a recipe’s ingredients. Embeddings allows Sibel to model the complex interactions between the ingredients in the recipe and capture the fit of any ingredient to all other ingredients in the recipe. Preliminary results suggest that whereas novelty has a negative effect of recipe trial, it has a positive effect on recipe’s ratings. The differential impact of novelty on popularity and preference is not well understood in the literature. She plans to further use her model to create a publicly available API based on an embedding generative model that recommends ingredients to improve recipes.

Piyush Anand (Cornell University) won the Shankar-Spiegel Dissertation Award for his dissertation proposal entitled “Smoke and Mirrors: Estimating the Impact of Regulation on Social Media Posting Behavior for E-Cigarettes.” The winning proposal was chaired by Vrinda Kadiyali, Nicholas H. Noyes Professor of Management and Professor of Marketing and Economics at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University.

Piyush Anand is a doctoral candidate in Marketing at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University. His research examines how machine learning methods can enrich managers’ and regulators’ understanding of consumer and firm behavior from online unstructured text and image data.

Unnati Narang of Texas A&M University, won the Shankar-Spiegel Dissertation Award for her dissertation proposal, originally titled, “The Impact of Mobile Apps on Online and Offline Shopping Behaviors.” The winning proposal was chaired by Venkatesh “Venky” Shankar, Coleman Chair Professor in Marketing and Director of Research at the Center for Retailing Studies.

Unnati Narang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Marketing Department at Texas A&M University. Her research interests are in in the causal impact of marketing strategies relating to mobile and platform technologies on consumer and firm decisions. Unnati is also the winner of the Mays Business School Outstanding Doctoral Student Award for Research, and the Mathew Joseph Emerging Scholar Award for 2019.

Xian Gu

2017 Recipient
University of Maryland

Daniel McCarthy

2016 Recipient
The Wharton School

Seongwoo Lee

2015 Recipient
University of Maryland

Xian Gu, of University of Maryland, won the Shankar-Spiegel Dissertation Award for her dissertation proposal, originally titled, “Selling Premium in the Presence of Free Products: Impact of Product Line Extensions.”

This winning proposal was co-chaired by P. K. Kannan, Professor of Marketing and Dean’s Chair in Marketing Science and Liye Ma, Associate Professor of Marketing, all at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park.

Xian Gu is a Ph.D. candidate in the Marketing Department at University of Maryland. Her research interests are in quantitative marketing with applications of treatment effect estimation methods, dynamic structural models, field experiments and machine learning to the substantive areas of omnichannel marketing and mobile marketing.

Daniel McCarthy, of The Wharton School, won the Shankar-Spiegel Dissertation Award for his dissertation proposal titled, “Latent Relationship Trajectory Models and Their Applications in Marketing.”

This winning proposal was co-chaired by Eric T. Bradlow, Professor of Marketing, Statistics, Education and Economics and Faculty Director of the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative; Peter S. Fader, Professor of Marketing, and Shane T. Jensen, Associate Professor, all at The Wharton School.

Daniel McCarthy is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Statistics at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include customer lifetime value (CLV), Bayesian computation, missing data problems, the marketing/finance interface, digital marketing analytics, and online advertising.

Seoungwoo Lee of the University of Maryland, College Park won the 2015 Shankar-Spiegel Dissertation Proposal Award for his dissertation proposal titled, “Free, Paid, or Freemium: Dynamic Versioning Decisions for Mobile Apps.”

This winning proposal was co-chaired by University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business Professors Jie Zhang and Michel Wedel.

Seoungwoo Lee’s dissertation research rigorously addresses an important and timely topic: how app publishers make versioning decisions and how app platforms can improve their commission structures to achieve mutual benefits.

Arun Gopalakrishnan

2014 Recipient
The Wharton School

Lin Liu

2013 Recipient
University of Southern California

Xi “Alan” Zhang

2013 Recipient
Georgia State University

Arun Gopalakrishnan, of The Wharton School, won the Shankar-Spiegel Dissertation Award for his dissertation proposal titled, “Latent Relationship Trajectory Models and Their Applications in Marketing.”

This winning proposal was co-chaired by Eric T. Bradlow, Professor of Marketing, Statistics and Education and Vice Dean and Director of Wharton Doctoral Programs, and Peter S. Fader, Professor of Marketing, both at The Wharton School.

Arun Golpalakrishnan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Marketing Department at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests in marketing science are focused on modeling customer dynamics in panel data and intertemporal decision making using Bayesian methods and dynamic structural models.

Lin Liu, of USC, won the Shankar-Spiegel Dissertation Award for his dissertation proposal titled, “Online Shopping Intermediaries: The Design of Search Environments.”

This winning proposal was co-chaired by Anthony Dukes, Associate Professor of Marketing, and Sha Yang, Professor of Marketing at the USC Marshall School of Business.

Lin Liu is a Ph.D. candidate in the Marketing Department at USC, whose research interests include online shopping intermediaries, consumer search, and e-commerce.

Alan Zhang, of Georgia State, won the Shankar-Spiegel Dissertation Award for his dissertation proposal titled, “Managing a Profitable Interactive Email Marketing Program: Modeling and Analysis.”

This winning proposal was chaired by V. Kumar, Regents Professor, Richard and Susan Lenny Distinguished Chair & Professor in Marketing, Executive Director, Center for Excellence in Brand and Consumer Management and Director, Ph.D. Program in Marketing at the J. Mack Robinson School of Business.

Xi “Alan” Zhang is a research analyst at Center for Excellence in Brand & Customer Management; and Ph.D. Candidate in Marketing at the J. Mack Robinson School of Business at Georgia State University.

Yi Zhu

2012 Recipient
University of Southern California

Kaifu Zhang

2011 Recipient
INSEAD

Shyam Gopinath

2010 Recipient
Northwestern University

Yi Zhu, of USC, won the Shankar-Spiegel Dissertation Award for his dissertation proposal titled “The Selective Reporting of Factual Content by Commercial Media.”

This winning proposal was chaired by Anthony Dukes, Associate Professor of Marketing at the USC Marshall School of Business.

Yi Zhu is a Ph.D. candidate at USC studying quantitative marketing. His research interest focuses on the application of industrial organization models in marketing, auctions and advertising. Specifically, he has conducted research in online auctions and search advertising. His recent works have been published in Marketing Science. He is the recipient of the 2011 James S. Ford/Commerce Associates award. Prior to pursuing an academic career, he worked as a consultant at Shanghai Investment Consulting Corporation.

Kaifu Zhang, of INSEAD, won the Shankar-Spiegel Dissertation Award for his dissertation proposal titled “Managing User-Generated Content”.

This winning proposal was chaired by Miklos Sarvary, Professor of Marketing, Director, The Learning Innovation Centre and Deputy Dean for Executive Development at INSEAD.

Dr. Zhang is currently an assistant professor of marketing at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business.

Shyam Gopinath, of Northwestern University, won the Shankar-Spiegel Dissertation Award for his dissertation proposal titled “An Extended Dynamic Hierarchical Model for the Content of Online Consumer Generated Media”.

This winning proposal was chaired by Lakshman Krishnamurthi, the A. Montgomery Ward Distinguished Professor of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Northwestern University.

Dr. Gopinath is currently an assistant professor in the Marketing Department at the University of Utah.

Jonathan Zhang

2009 Recipient
Columbia University

Jonathan Zhang, Columbia University, was awarded the Shankar-Spiegel Dissertation Proposal Award for his work titled, “Optimal Targeted Dynamic Pricing in B2B Settings”. This winning work was co-chaired by Columbia University professors Asim Ansari and Oded Netzer.

Dr. Zhang is currently an assistant professor in the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington. Dr. Zhang specializes in pricing, dynamic customer relationship management, customer interdependence and empirical marketing models.