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Michael Lewis - Emory University, Goizueta Business School. Atlanta, GA, US

Michael Lewis

Professor of Marketing | Emory University, Goizueta Business School

Atlanta, GA, UNITED STATES

www.fandomanalytics.com All Things Fandom and Sports Analytics

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Marketing professor Mike Lewis talks about the Emory community Mike Lewis

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Sports Fandom: Diehard or Dying?

Social

Biography

Mike Lewis’s work focuses on the intersection of sports analytics and sports marketing. He studies issues ranging from player performance analytics to brand equity in sports. This approach makes Professor Lewis a unique expert on fandom as his work addresses the complete process from success on the field to success at the box office. Representative research topics include Competitive Balance, Generation Z Fandom, Performance Analytics, Salary Market Inefficiencies, Athlete Star Power, Esports, and Influencer Marketing. He also spends an excessive amount of time thinking about team names and mascots. His sports analytics content can be heard at the Fanalytics with Mike Lewis podcast.

The foundation for Professor Lewis’ work is a deep background in statistics and optimization. These tools provide a data-driven approach to measurement and decision-making. He has published work related to loyalty programs, customer lifetime value, and dynamic pricing in addition to sports topics.

Professor Lewis’ background includes a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, an MBA from the University of Chicago, and engineering degrees from the University of Illinois. He has published in outlets such as the Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Management Science, the Journal of Marketing, and the New York Times.

He can be reached at mike.lewis@emory.edu or www.fandomanalytics.com.

Education (4)

Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University: PhD, Marketing 2001

Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago: MBA, Marketing and Finance 1993

College of Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana: MS, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research 1990

College of Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana: BS, Industrial Engineering 1989

Areas of Expertise (5)

Revenue Management & Dynamic Pricing

Customer Relationship Management

Sports Analytics

Sports Marketing

Fandom

Publications (6)

Key Policy Considerations for Reducing Public Consumption of Vice Products

American Marketing Association

2021 While the goal of marketing is usually to boost purchase rates and strengthen relationships between consumers and brands, counter-marketing is an increasingly common strategy for reducing the consumption of “vice” goods such as cigarettes ...

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Enduring effects of goal achievement and failure within customer loyalty programs: A large-scale field experiment

Marketing Science

2016 This research investigates whether there are enduring effects of goal achievement and failure within customer loyalty promotion programs. We collaborated with a major hotel chain to launch a large scale field experiment involving 95,532 existing loyalty customers ...

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Incorporating dynamics in customer lifetime value models

Handbook of Research on Customer Equity in Marketing

2015 Over the past two decades the marketing literature has increasingly adopted the perspective that customer relationships should be viewed and managed as economically valuable assets...

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An exploratory analysis of cigarette price premium, market share and consumer loyalty in relation to continued consumption versus cessation in a national US panel

BMJ Open

2015 Brand equity and consumer loyalty play a role in continued purchasing behaviour; however, this research has largely focused on non-addictive products without counter-marketing tactics. We examined the impact of brand equity ...

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The Unintended Consequences of Countermarketing Strategies: How Particular Antismoking Measures May Shift Consumers to More Dangerous Cigarettes

Marketing Science

2015 Countermarketing, or efforts to reduce consumption of certain products, has become common in categories such as tobacco, junk food, fossil fuels, and furs. Countermarketing has a particularly long history in the tobacco industry. Efforts to reduce smoking have ...

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Customer portfolio composition and customer equity feedback effects: Student diversity and acquisition in educational communities

Marketing Letters

2013 Researchers in marketing have long recognized that current populations of customers can influence the behavior of prospective customers. This paper draws on existing marketing theories to empirically examine how changes in student body ...

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Research Spotlight

In the News (12)

Love him or loathe him, Colin Kaepernick is the most influential athlete of the 21st century

Yahoo! Sports  online

2021-08-26

“It’s interesting to see how quickly the NFL evolved, from ‘these are not the values of our audience’ to ‘these are our values, and our audience needs to adjust,’ ” says Dr. Mike Lewis of Emory University's Marketing Analytics Center. “It’s fascinating how quickly the NFL has reversed course.”

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Economists estimate $100M loss in revenue with All-Star Game leaving Georgia

FOX8  online

2021-07-13

Mike Lewis, Marketing Professor at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School said “I think there are direct economic impacts. You lose the hotel business, the revenue business. I’ve seen folks put a number of $100M but the long term is more questionable and more dangerous. If the state of Georgia starts to lose films, if Major League baseball starts to lose fans.”

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How Atlanta Hawks’ Playoff Success Is Bolstering The Team’s Brand – Locally And Nationally

WABE-FM (NPR)  online

2021-06-03

“The playoffs are where the moments happen,” said Mike Lewis who teaches sports marketing at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. “And moments are really what makes sports. It’s the shared moments that create, you know, frankly, the legends and the stories that fan bases have.”

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Cowboys, Patriots fans are best in the NFL; Chiefs, Los Angeles lagging: study

Yahoo! Sports  online

2019-06-24

Emory University’s Goizueta School of Business has released its latest NFL Fandom Report, ranking the relative fan strengths of the 32 NFL franchises, and once again, the Dallas Cowboys lead the pack. Right behind them: the Patriots, Eagles, Giants and Steelers.

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Cowboys, Patriots, Eagles have NFL's best fans, study finds

Yahoo!  online

2018-06-26

Which team has the best fans in the NFL? Why, yours, of course, because they’ve got you. But if we go on more than gut feelings, there are some statistical and economic models that can tell us exactly which fanbases claim the title of Best in the NFL. Emory University has released its latest ranking of NFL fans, and the results are certain to enrage you … unless you’re a Dallas fan. Let’s dig in.

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Does negative political advertising actually work?

phys.org  online

2018-06-04

The study "A Border Strategy Analysis of Ad Source and Message Tone in Senatorial Campaigns," which will be published in the June edition of INFORMS journal Marketing Science, is co-authored by Yanwen Wang of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver; Michael Lewis of Emory University in Atlanta; and David A. Schweidel of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

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To Bolster KLM’s Identity, a ‘Charmingly Clueless Approach’ to Humor

New York Times  online

2016-08-29

Humor in advertising is appealing because “the entertainment aspect is the hook to get people to watch,” thus giving legitimacy to a brand that’s less familiar.

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When it comes to Twitter, @Packers among best

Green Bay Press Gazette  

2016-07-17

The analysis was developed by Michael Lewis and Manish Tripathi of the Goizueta Business School at Emory University in Atlanta. Their research focuses on how sports organizations create brand equity and customer loyalty. They also developed analytics for such items as Fan Equity Rankings (the @Packers are seventh) and Social Media Based Personality...

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Bears Fan Base More Loyal Than Packers: Study

Chicago Patch  

2016-07-14

Dr. Michael Lewis of the Atlanta university’s Goizueta School of Business used a formula combining each team’s sales and social media following to find the “Dynamic Fan Equity,” a number based on the team’s fans willingness to spend, miles traveled to see the team play and following on social media...

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Study ranks Eagles supporters as fifth-best fan base in the NFL

Philly.com  

2016-07-12

Conducted by Dr. Michael Lewis of Emory University’s Goizueta School of Business, the study analyzed four years of social media data and 15 years of attendance data for NFL teams’ fan bases. Lewis then ranked teams based on their “Dynamic Fan Equity,” which is calculated using their “Fan Equity” (fans’ willingness to spend) and “Social Media Equity” (fans’ willingness to share) scores...

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Washington has everything to lose

ESPN  

2014-09-02

Now there's new evidence that shows Snyder is actively hurting his team by clinging to its offensive moniker. Michael Lewis and Manish Tripathi, marketing professors at Emory University, calculate what they call fan equity, which is how much money fans are willing to invest in their teams once you control for how well a club does on the field and for how big and rich its market is. The professors have found that Washington's pull is declining. "We see the Redskins coming in the bottom half of the league," says Lewis. "But what's really key is the change." Specifically, the team has fallen from first in the NFL to 20th over the past decade...

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‘Redskins’ Is Bad Business

The New York Times  

2014-06-24

The moral arguments against the Washington Redskins’ team name, which is considered offensive to American Indians, are by now well known, especially in the wake of last week’s decision by the United States Patent and Trademark Office to strip the team of trademark protections...

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Answers (1)

Baseball - If You Speed It Up, Will They Come?

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In an effort to speed up baseball games and attract more fans, Major League Baseball has unveiled a new set of rules during Spring Training. The rules include a 30-second clock between batters, 15-seconds for pitchers to start their motion, players must be in the batter’s box with eight seconds left on the clock before running to their larger bases. Research by Goizueta Sports Marketing Professor Mike Lewis finds that sports fandom is down and attracting Gen Z could be the key to attracting new fans. Lewis’ research shows younger people like sports with continuous action like soccer and esports. The pitch by baseball to make the game faster is an effort to attract a younger fan.