Kusum Ailawadi
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Charles Jordan 1911 TU'12 Professor of Marketing
Areas of expertise: marketing, statistics
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No matter how smart you are, how high your GPA, how excellent your GMATs, you can still learn a great deal from the other smart people in the classroom with you. This is the environment at Tuck.
For the first couple of months you may feel a bit of a shock from the constant intellectual challenge and rigor of this environment. But, soon you realize that you are an intrinsic part of the dynamic, and that is a thrilling realization. The brilliant people around you are your community. This is the time when you form relationships that will endure for the rest of your life. There's no doubt that the quality of the teaching, the quality of the curriculum are top notch. But, at Tuck, your personal satisfaction will be very important as well.
I teach the Market-Focused Strategy course for second-year students. It's a highly integrated class, which is to say it brings together the creative aspects of marketing, like positioning, branding, and advertising, with the analytical rigor that is necessary to tie marketing activities to the bottom line. Using case studies from a variety of industries and markets, it builds on the core marketing course and adds depth in areas such as product line management, channel management, and customer management.
Marketing is more broadly defined today than it was 10 years ago. Brand management has always appealed to a lot of MBAs, but now you see marketing specialization within consulting companies. Marketing is very important to the entrepreneur as well.
My colleagues and I conduct research on real business problems. We aren't working on abstract, theoretical treatises that never live outside the world of academic journals. Our research involves work with actual managers, using real data, and often questioning conventional wisdom. We formulate theories and frameworks, and conduct empirical analyses that resonate with relevance for industry. And we bring this relevance into the classroom. This gives our students an enormous competitive advantage.
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