Ajay K. Kohli
Gary T. and Elizabeth R. Jones Chair in Management; Professor of Marketing; Regents Professor | Scheller College of Business at Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA, UNITED STATES
Ajay Kohli is among the 100 most-cited authors in the fields of business and economics combined in a decade.
Media
Publications:
Documents:
Videos:
Audio/Podcasts:
Biography
Dr. Ajay Kohli is among the 100 most cited authors in the fields of business and economics combined in a decade, and two of his articles are among the 10 most cited Journal of Marketing articles in a quarter century. He is represented in ISIHighlyCited.com, an ISI web site that lists the top 0.5% cited authors in two decades in a variety of social and natural sciences combined.
Kohli is a former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Marketing, the premier broad-based academic journal in Marketing. He currently is Associate Editor, Journal of Marketing, Associate Editor, Journal of Marketing Research, Senior Editor, International Journal of Research in Marketing.
Kohli has received several "best-paper" awards. He is the first two-time recipient of the Sheth Foundation / Journal of Marketing award for an article with the highest long-term impact. He is also a recipient of the Alpha Kappa Psi award (now called MSI / Paul Root award) for his article in the Journal of Marketing, the ISBM-David T. Wilson-Sheth Foundation Award for Long Term Impact in B2B Marketing, and the Sheth award for his article in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. In addition, one of his articles was a finalist for the Harold H. Maynard award (now called Hunt / Maynard award) for its contribution to marketing theory and thought.
Professor Kohli received the 2017 AMA/McGraw-Hill/Irwin award, widely considered to be the highest career award in Marketing. He received the Paul D. Converse award (termed “Marketing Hall of Fame” by Fortune) in 2016. He is the recipient of three honorary doctorates -- from BI Norwegian Business School, University of St. Gallen, and Corvinus University of Budapest. He is an AMA Fellow, an EMAC Fellow, and an ISBM Fellow. He is a recipient of the IIMC Distinguished Alumnus Award, the Mahajan award for career contributions to marketing strategy, and is one of three recipients of the 25-year Consortium Fellow Excellence award for his year.
Areas of Expertise (3)
Account Management
Customer Centricity
End-to-end Customer Solutions
Selected Accomplishments (2)
2017 AMA/McGraw-Hill/Irwin Award
Distinguished Marketing Educator Award
Sheth Foundation/Journal of Marketing Award
Awarded for an article in Journal of Marketing with the biggest long-term contribution to the marketing discipline, 2017
Education (3)
University of Pittsburgh: Ph.D., Business Administration 1986
Indian Institute of Management: P.G.D.M., M.B.A. 1977
Indian Institute of Technology: B. Tech., Electrical Engineering 1975
Affiliations (5)
- American Marketing Association
- European Marketing Academy
- INFORMS
- Academy of Marketing Science
- Association for Consumer Research
Links (6)
Selected Media Appearances (1)
IIMC honours author Amish Tripathi, other celebrity alumni
Hindustan Times online
2017-11-15
The distinguished alumnus awards - the highest award of the institute to honour the alumni who have achieved exemplary success in their fields - were conferred on a number of achievers
Selected Articles (5)
Industrial Marketing Management
The Role of a Solutions Salesperson: Reducing Uncertainty and Fostering Adaptiveness
Ulaga, Wolfgang and Ajay K. Kohli
2018 Suppliers in business-to-business markets increasingly are seeking growth by providing end-to-end solutions to customers. Customers, on their part, see solutions and accompanying performance-based vendor contracts as ways to assure themselves of performance outcomes they need. This article draws on extant literature in organizational buying behavior, industrial marketing and project marketing, as well as the distinctive nature of customer solutions, to delineate three overarching types of uncertainties among customers and suppliers: (1) need uncertainty, (2) process uncertainty and (3) outcome uncertainty. Each of these types of uncertainties is present across the four stages of a solution process (requirements definition, customization and integration, deployment, and post-deployment support). However, the nature of these uncertainties changes as a solution evolves from one stage to the next. Based on this, we delineate a solution salesperson's role as one of reducing specific uncertainties across the solution process by providing pertinent information to key stakeholders within the customer- and supplier organizations, and encouraging adaptive behavior of the parties involved. We discuss implications for practice, and suggest directions for further research.
Conducting field-based, discovery-oriented research: lessons from our market orientation research experience
AMS Review
Bernard J. Jaworski, Ajay K. Kohli
2017 The purpose of this article is to surface lessons we learned in course of doing our article on market orientation (Kohli and Jaworski Journal of Marketing, 54, 1-18 1990). These lessons are intended to provide specific guidance for scholars – particularly PhD students and junior faculty – interested in developing new constructs and theories related to them. We organize the lessons into four sections that reflect the end-to-end research process. Specifically, the paper is organized around issues relating to: (a) choosing whether and what to study, (b) with whom to study it, (c) doing the research, and (d) crafting the findings. For each section, we identify one or more lessons or principles that we believe generalize to a broader research context. We conclude with a set of ideas for future research on market orientation, especially those that could benefit from field-based studies.
Theorizing with managers: Nenonen et al. are right on!
European Journal of Marketing
Ajay K. Kohli
2017 The purpose of this paper is to reflect and comment upon Nenonen et al.’s paper on theorizing with managers.
Market Orientation in a Digital World
Global Business Review
Ajay K. Kohli
2017 The concept of market orientation was introduced in the early 1990s as entailing three sets of activities: generation, dissemination and responsiveness to market intelligence. Since then the World Wide Web has ushered in a sea change in the way people communicate and interact. This article explores the impact of the still-developing digital technologies on market orientation. In particular, it examines how the practice of each of the three components of market orientation is being impacted by digital technologies, and whether market orientation continues to be important for business organizations. The discussion identifies opportunities presented by digital technologies as well as difficulties generated by them.
Does Brand Licensing Increase a Licensor's Shareholder Value?
Management Science
Adina Bărbulescu Robinson, Kapil R. Tuli, Ajay K. Kohli
2014 This study examines 171 brand licensing announcements and subsequent changes in the licensor firms' shareholder values using the event study method. We find that although brand licensing announcements lead to positive abnormal returns on average, nearly 44% of the announcements in our sample are followed by negative abnormal returns. We argue that investors react more favorably to a brand licensing announcement when they believe (i) the brand has greater ability to stimulate licensee product sales (and thus generate higher royalties for the licensor) and (ii) the licensor firm has greater ability to limit licensee opportunism (and thus limit brand dilution and its adverse effect on sales of other products marketed under the brand name). In line with our hypotheses related to a brand's ability to stimulate licensee product sales, the study's findings suggest that investors react more favorably to announcements involving brands with greater brand fit and greater brand breadth. However, investors appear to react less favorably to announcements involving brands with higher advertising investments. In line with our hypotheses related to a licensor firm's ability to limit licensee opportunism, the study's findings suggest that investors react more favorably to announcements involving larger licensors; however, investors' reactions do not appear to be influenced by licensor firms' licensing experience.