V. Kumar

V. Kumar (VK) is the Regents Professor, Lenny Distinguished Chair Professor of Marketing, Executive Director, Center for Excellence in Brand & Customer Management, and Director, Ph.D. Program in Marketing, J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University. He has been recognized with seven lifetime achievement awards in Marketing Strategy, Inter-Organizational Issues, Retailing, Business to Business Marketing, and Marketing Research from the AMA and other professional organizations, the Paul D Converse Award, the Sheth Foundation/ Journal of Marketing Long term Impact Award, and the Gary L Lilien ISMS-MSI Practice Prize Award.

He has published over 200 articles in many scholarly journals in marketing including the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Management Science and Operations Research. His books include Managing Customers for Profit, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Customer Lifetime Value, Marketing Research, Statistical Methods in CRM, and International Marketing Research.

He has won several awards for his research publications in scholarly journals including the Don Lehmann Award thrice for the best paper published in the Journal of Marketing/Journal of Marketing Research in a 2-year period, the MSI/Paul H Root Award thrice for the Journal of Marketing articles contributing to the best practice of marketing, the Robert Buzzell Award for the best paper published by the Marketing Science Institute, the Davidson Award for the best paper published in the Journal of Retailing, the Outstanding Paper Award for the best paper published in Forecasting form the International Institute of Forecasters, and the Best Runner-Up Award for the paper published in the Journal of Interactive Marketing. VK was also awarded the Sheth Foundation Best Paper Award for his paper published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.

VK leads the marketing science to marketing practice initiative at the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science and has worked with Global Fortune 1000 firms to maximize their profits. He also serves as the AE and serves on the Editorial Review Board of many scholarly journals in Marketing. VK spends his free time visiting business leaders to identify challenging problems to solve. He plays Tennis and Basketball to relieve his stress arising out of being in academics. Finally, VK has been chosen as a Legend in Marketingalong with Phil Kotler, Paul Green and Jag Sheth where his work is published in a 10 volume encyclopedia with commentaries from scholars worldwide.

Werner J. Reinartz

His research interests focuses on the dynamics of the consumer-firm interaction. This interest bridges the areas of customer relationship management, retailing, database marketing, and E-commerce. In particular, Professor Reinartz is interested in empirically modeling marketing phenomena in these areas. His research on measuring and managing the lifetime value of customers has received major academic awards:

• Winner of the 1999 American Marketing Association Doctoral Dissertation Competition;
• Winner of the 2001 Donald R. Lehmann Award for the Best Dissertation-Based Research Paper to be published in the Journal of Marketing Research or the Journal of Marketing;
• Two-time winner (2003, 2005) of the MSI/Paul Root award. Selected by the editorial board of the Journal of Marketing, this best paper award identifies a significant contribution to the advancement of marketing practice.
• Selected into the biennial MSI Young Scholars Program 2005

His research appeared in academic journals such as the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Service Research, in Multivariate Behavioral Research, the Journal of Retailing, and in Marketing Letters. In addition his work appeared in the managerial business press such as for example Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, and European Business Forum.

Professor Reinartz has taught on the graduate, Ph.D., and executive level. His teaching portfolio comprises customer relationship management, database marketing, marketing strategy and marketing research. In addition, Professor Reinartz is the progam director for a number of INSEAD clients such as Henkel, Haniel, METRO, and Xerox. He has authored award-winning teaching material, for example the case study, Independer.com, which was the winner in the European Management Foundation (efmd) E-commerce case writing competition 2000. Also, he has co-authored (together with V. Kumar) a textbook on CRM that has been published by John Wiley in 2006.

He has consulted with a variety of international corporations on CRM and Direct Response Marketing, such as for example Cora Group (France), Cincom (Europe) Spiegel (USA), IBM (USA), and Comdirect Bank (Germany).

Professor Reinartz holds a Ph.D. in Marketing from the University of Houston, USA, an MBA from Henley Management College (UK), and a Dipl.-Ing. in Agricultural Economics from Munich University of Technology (Germany).