Sunil Gupta
Edward W. Carter Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School
Chair, General Management Program
Sunil Gupta is the Edward W. Carter Professor of Business Administration and Chair of the General Management Program at Harvard Business School. He is also the co-chair of the executive programs on Driving Digital and Social Strategy and Competing on Business Analytics and Big Data. In the recent past, he has taught an elective course on Digital Marketing Strategy to MBA students and Advanced Management Program to senior managers. From 2008-2013, he served as the Head of the Marketing Unit.
Sunil's research interests are in the areas of digital marketing, customer management, pricing, and return on marketing investment. His articles in these areas have won several awards including the 1993, 2002, and 2009 O'Dell Award and the 1998 and 2005 Paul Green Award of the Journal of Marketing Research for the most significant contribution in the field of marketing; the 1998, 2000, and 2003 Marketing Science Institute award for the best paper; the 2004 best paper award for the Journal of Interactive Marketing and the 1999 best paper award for the International Journal of Research in Marketing.
Sunil is an area editor for the Journal of Marketing Research and an editorial board member of five major journals.
Sunil is co-author of two books. His recent book, Managing Customers as Investments, was published by the Wharton School Publishing in February 2005.
Prior to joining Harvard, Sunil was the Meyer Feldberg Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and Assistant Professor at UCLA. In 1996, Sunil spent his sabbatical with McKinsey & Co.
Sunil holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Books
Gupta, Sunil, and Donald R. Lehmann. Managing Customers as Investments: The Strategic Value of Customers in the Long Run. Wharton School Publishing, 2005. (2006 winner of the annual Berry-AMA book prize for the best book in marketing.)
Lehmann, Donald R., Sunil Gupta, and Joel Steckel. Marketing Research. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1997.
Journal Articles
Keiningham, Timothy, Sunil Gupta, Lerzan Aksoy, and Alexander Buoye. "The High Price of Customer Satisfaction." MIT Sloan Management Review 55, no. 3 (Spring 2014).
Gupta, Sunil. "For Mobile Devices, Think Apps, Not Ads." Harvard Business Review 91, no. 3 (March 2013).
Gupta, Sunil. "The Mobile Banking and Payment Revolution." European Financial Review (February–March 2013), 3–6.
Gupta, Sunil, and Tanya Bijlani. "E-Commerce in Asia: Challenges and Opportunities." Asia Business Insights (2012).
Gupta, Sunil. "Customer-Based Valuation." Journal of Interactive Marketing 23, no. 2 (May 2009): 169–178.
Gupta, Sunil, and Carl F. Mela. "What Is a Free Customer Worth?" Harvard Business Review 86, no. 11 (November 2008).
Duvvuri, Sri Devi, Asim Ansari, and Sunil Gupta. "Consumers' Price Sensitivities Across Complementary Categories." Management Science 53, no. 12 (December 2007): 1933–1945.
Iyengar, Raghuram, Asim Ansari, and Sunil Gupta. "A Model of Consumer Learning for Service Quality and Usage." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 44, no. 4 (November 2007): 529–544.
Yunchuan, Liu, Sunil Gupta, and John Zhang. "Self-Restraint as an Online Entry-Deterrence Strategy." Management Science 52, no. 11 (November 2006): 1799–1809.
Gupta, Sunil, and Valarie Zeithaml. "Customer Metrics and Their Impact on Financial Performance." Marketing Science 25, no. 6 (November–December 2006): 718–739.
Gupta, Sunil, Dominique Hanssens, Bruce Hardie, Wiliam Kahn, V. Kumar, Nathaniel Lin, Nalini Ravishanker, and S. Sriram. "Modeling Customer Lifetime Value." Journal of Service Research 9, no. 2 (November 2006): 139–155.
Gupta, Sunil, and Donald R. Lehmann. "Customer Lifetime Value and Firm Valuation." Journal of Relationship Marketing 5, nos. 2/3 (October 2006).
Neslin, Scott, Sunil Gupta, Wagner Kamakura, Junxiang Lu, and Charlotte Mason. "Detection Defection: Measuring and Understanding the Predictive Accuracy of Customer Churn Models." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 43, no. 2 (May 2006): 204–211.
Gupta, Sunil, Donald R. Lehmann, and Jennifer A. Stuart. "Valuing Customers." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 41, no. 1 (February 2004): 7–18. (Winner of the 2009 William F. O'Dell award from the Journal of Marketing Research.)
Gupta, Sunil, Donald R. Lehmann, and Jennifer A. Stuart. "Valuing Customers." Recherche et Applications en Marketing 19, no. 2 (2004).
Iyenger, Raghu, Asim Ansari, and Sunil Gupta. "Leveraging Information across Categories." Quantitative Marketing and Economics 1, no. 4 (December 2003): 425–465.
Essegaier, Skander, Sunil Gupta, and John Zhang. "Pricing Access Services." Marketing Science 21, no. 2 (spring 2002): 119–138.
Gupta, Sunil, and Donald R. Lehmann. "Customers As Assets." Journal of Interactive Marketing 17, no. 1 (winter 2002): 9–24. (Winner of Journal of Interactive Marketing. Best Paper Award.)
Han, Sangman, Sunil Gupta, and Donald R. Lehmann. "Consumer Price Sensitivity and Price Thresholds." Journal of Retailing 77, no. 4 (winter 2001): 435–456. (Honorable Mention, Davidson Award for Best Paper, Journal of Retailing, 2003.)
Gupta, Sunil, and Donald R. Lehmann. "Untangling the Value of Web Companies." Part 8. Financial Times, Mastering Management Supplement (November 20, 2000). (Reprinted in Mastering Management 2.0 (2001). Financial Times/Prentice Hall.)
Gupta, Sunil. "Roundtable on B2B Exchanges." Antitrust (American Bar Association) 15, no. 1 (fall 2000): 8–16.
Bucklin, Randolph E., James Lattin, Asim Ansari, David Bell, Eloise Coupey, Sunil Gupta, John D.C. Little, Carl Mela, Alan Montgomery, and Joel Steckel. "Choice and the Internet: From Clickstream to Research Stream." Marketing Letters 10, no. 3 (August 1999): 245–258.
Forsyth, John, Sunil Gupta, Sudeep Haldar, Anil Kaul, and Keith Kettle. "A Segmentation You Can Act on." McKinsey Quarterly 3 (1999): 6–15.
Bucklin, Randolph E., and Sunil Gupta. "Commercial Use of UPC Scanner Data: Industry and Academic Perspectives." Marketing Science 18, no. 3 (1999): 247–273.
Manchanda, Puneet, Asim Ansari, and Sunil Gupta. The "Shopping Basket": A Model for Multi-Category Purchase Incidence Decision. Marketing Science 18, no. 2 (1999): 95–115.
Jedidi, Kamel, Carl F. Mela, and Sunil Gupta. "Managing Advertising and Promotion for Long-Run Profitability." Marketing Science 18, no. 1 (1999): 1–22. (Winner of Marketing Science Institute Best Paper Award To honor the authors of the MSI working papers that have made the most significant contribution to marketing practice and thought presented by Marketing Science Institute.)
Balasubramanian, Sridhar, Sunil Gupta, Wagner Kamakura, and Michel Wedel. "Modeling Large Data Sets in Marketing." Special Issue on Large Data Sets in Business Economics. Statistica Neerlandica 52, no. 3 (November 1998).
Bucklin, Randolph E., Sunil Gupta, and S. Siddarth. "Modelling the Effect of Purchase Quantity on Consumer Choice of Product Assortment." Journal of Forecasting 17, nos. 3-4 (June–July 1998): 281–301.
Mela, Carl, Sunil Gupta, and Kamel Jedidi. "Assessing Long-Term Promotional Influences on Market Structure." International Journal of Research in Marketing 15, no. 2 (May 1998): 89–108. (Winner of International Journal of Research in Marketing. Best Paper Award.)
Bucklin, Randolph E., Sunil Gupta, and S. Siddarth. "Determining Segmentation in Sales Response Across Consumer Purchase Behaviors." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 35 (May 1998): 189–197.
Russell, Gary, David Bell, Anand Bodapati, Christina Brown, Joengwen Chiang, Gary Gaeth, Sunil Gupta, and Puneet Manchanda. "Perspectives on Multiple Category Choice." Marketing Letters 8, no. 3 (July 1997): 297–305.
Mela, Carl, Sunil Gupta, and Donald R. Lehmann. "Long Term Impact of Promotion and Advertising on Consumer Brand Choice." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 34 (May 1997): 248–261. (.)
Dillon, William R., and Sunil Gupta. "A Segment-Level Model of Category Volume and Brand Choice." Marketing Science 15, no. 1 (1996): 38–59.
Bucklin, Randolph E., Sunil Gupta, and Sangman Han. "A Brand's Eye View of Response Segmentation in Consumer Choice Behavior." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 32 (February 1995): 66–74.
Bockenholt, Ulf, Melinda S. de Borrero, Ham Bozdogan, Wayne DeSarbo, William R. Dillon, Sunil Gupta, Wagner Kamakura, Ajith Kumar, V. Ramaswamy, and Michael Zenor. "Issues in the Estimation and Application of Latent Structure Models of Choice." Marketing Letters 5, no. 4 (October 1994): 323–334.
Gupta, Sunil. "Reflections on 'Impact of Sales Promotions on When, What, and How Much to Buy'." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 30 (November 1993): 522–524.
Gupta, Sunil, and Lee G. Cooper. "The Discounting of Discounts and Promotion Thresholds." Journal of Consumer Research 19 (December 1992): 401–411.
Bucklin, Randolph E., and Sunil Gupta. "Brand Choice, Purchase Incidence, and Segmentation: An Integrated Modeling Approach." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 29 (May 1992): 201–215. (Finalist for the 1997 O'Dell Award, Journal of Marketing Research.)
Gupta, Sunil, and Donald G. Morrison. "Estimating Heterogeneity in Consumers' Purchase Rates." Marketing Science 10 (summer 1991): 264–269.
Gupta, Sunil. "Stochastic Models of Interpurchase Time with Time-Dependent Covariates." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 28 (February 1991): 1–15.
Lehmann, Donald R., and Sunil Gupta. "PACM: A Two Stage Procedure for Analyzing Structural Models." Applied Psychological Measurement 13 (September 1989): 301–321.
Gupta, Sunil. "Impact of Sales Promotions on When, What, and How Much to Buy." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 25 (November 1988): 342–355. (.)
DeSarbo, Wayne S., Donald R. Lehmann, Morris B. Holbrook, William J. Havlena, and Sunil Gupta. "A Stochastic Three-Way Unfolding Model for Asymmetric Binary Data." Applied Psychological Measurement 11 (December 1987): 397–418.
Edward W. Carter Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School
Chair, General Management Program
Sunil Gupta is the Edward W. Carter Professor of Business Administration and Chair of the General Management Program at Harvard Business School. He is also the co-chair of the executive programs on Driving Digital and Social Strategy and Competing on Business Analytics and Big Data. In the recent past, he has taught an elective course on Digital Marketing Strategy to MBA students and Advanced Management Program to senior managers. From 2008-2013, he served as the Head of the Marketing Unit.
Sunil's research interests are in the areas of digital marketing, customer management, pricing, and return on marketing investment. His articles in these areas have won several awards including the 1993, 2002, and 2009 O'Dell Award and the 1998 and 2005 Paul Green Award of the Journal of Marketing Research for the most significant contribution in the field of marketing; the 1998, 2000, and 2003 Marketing Science Institute award for the best paper; the 2004 best paper award for the Journal of Interactive Marketing and the 1999 best paper award for the International Journal of Research in Marketing.
Sunil is an area editor for the Journal of Marketing Research and an editorial board member of five major journals.
Sunil is co-author of two books. His recent book, Managing Customers as Investments, was published by the Wharton School Publishing in February 2005.
Prior to joining Harvard, Sunil was the Meyer Feldberg Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and Assistant Professor at UCLA. In 1996, Sunil spent his sabbatical with McKinsey & Co.
Sunil holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Books
Gupta, Sunil, and Donald R. Lehmann. Managing Customers as Investments: The Strategic Value of Customers in the Long Run. Wharton School Publishing, 2005. (2006 winner of the annual Berry-AMA book prize for the best book in marketing.)
Lehmann, Donald R., Sunil Gupta, and Joel Steckel. Marketing Research. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1997.
Journal Articles
Keiningham, Timothy, Sunil Gupta, Lerzan Aksoy, and Alexander Buoye. "The High Price of Customer Satisfaction." MIT Sloan Management Review 55, no. 3 (Spring 2014).
Gupta, Sunil. "For Mobile Devices, Think Apps, Not Ads." Harvard Business Review 91, no. 3 (March 2013).
Gupta, Sunil. "The Mobile Banking and Payment Revolution." European Financial Review (February–March 2013), 3–6.
Gupta, Sunil, and Tanya Bijlani. "E-Commerce in Asia: Challenges and Opportunities." Asia Business Insights (2012).
Gupta, Sunil. "Customer-Based Valuation." Journal of Interactive Marketing 23, no. 2 (May 2009): 169–178.
Gupta, Sunil, and Carl F. Mela. "What Is a Free Customer Worth?" Harvard Business Review 86, no. 11 (November 2008).
Duvvuri, Sri Devi, Asim Ansari, and Sunil Gupta. "Consumers' Price Sensitivities Across Complementary Categories." Management Science 53, no. 12 (December 2007): 1933–1945.
Iyengar, Raghuram, Asim Ansari, and Sunil Gupta. "A Model of Consumer Learning for Service Quality and Usage." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 44, no. 4 (November 2007): 529–544.
Yunchuan, Liu, Sunil Gupta, and John Zhang. "Self-Restraint as an Online Entry-Deterrence Strategy." Management Science 52, no. 11 (November 2006): 1799–1809.
Gupta, Sunil, and Valarie Zeithaml. "Customer Metrics and Their Impact on Financial Performance." Marketing Science 25, no. 6 (November–December 2006): 718–739.
Gupta, Sunil, Dominique Hanssens, Bruce Hardie, Wiliam Kahn, V. Kumar, Nathaniel Lin, Nalini Ravishanker, and S. Sriram. "Modeling Customer Lifetime Value." Journal of Service Research 9, no. 2 (November 2006): 139–155.
Gupta, Sunil, and Donald R. Lehmann. "Customer Lifetime Value and Firm Valuation." Journal of Relationship Marketing 5, nos. 2/3 (October 2006).
Neslin, Scott, Sunil Gupta, Wagner Kamakura, Junxiang Lu, and Charlotte Mason. "Detection Defection: Measuring and Understanding the Predictive Accuracy of Customer Churn Models." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 43, no. 2 (May 2006): 204–211.
Gupta, Sunil, Donald R. Lehmann, and Jennifer A. Stuart. "Valuing Customers." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 41, no. 1 (February 2004): 7–18. (Winner of the 2009 William F. O'Dell award from the Journal of Marketing Research.)
Gupta, Sunil, Donald R. Lehmann, and Jennifer A. Stuart. "Valuing Customers." Recherche et Applications en Marketing 19, no. 2 (2004).
Iyenger, Raghu, Asim Ansari, and Sunil Gupta. "Leveraging Information across Categories." Quantitative Marketing and Economics 1, no. 4 (December 2003): 425–465.
Essegaier, Skander, Sunil Gupta, and John Zhang. "Pricing Access Services." Marketing Science 21, no. 2 (spring 2002): 119–138.
Gupta, Sunil, and Donald R. Lehmann. "Customers As Assets." Journal of Interactive Marketing 17, no. 1 (winter 2002): 9–24. (Winner of Journal of Interactive Marketing. Best Paper Award.)
Han, Sangman, Sunil Gupta, and Donald R. Lehmann. "Consumer Price Sensitivity and Price Thresholds." Journal of Retailing 77, no. 4 (winter 2001): 435–456. (Honorable Mention, Davidson Award for Best Paper, Journal of Retailing, 2003.)
Gupta, Sunil, and Donald R. Lehmann. "Untangling the Value of Web Companies." Part 8. Financial Times, Mastering Management Supplement (November 20, 2000). (Reprinted in Mastering Management 2.0 (2001). Financial Times/Prentice Hall.)
Gupta, Sunil. "Roundtable on B2B Exchanges." Antitrust (American Bar Association) 15, no. 1 (fall 2000): 8–16.
Bucklin, Randolph E., James Lattin, Asim Ansari, David Bell, Eloise Coupey, Sunil Gupta, John D.C. Little, Carl Mela, Alan Montgomery, and Joel Steckel. "Choice and the Internet: From Clickstream to Research Stream." Marketing Letters 10, no. 3 (August 1999): 245–258.
Forsyth, John, Sunil Gupta, Sudeep Haldar, Anil Kaul, and Keith Kettle. "A Segmentation You Can Act on." McKinsey Quarterly 3 (1999): 6–15.
Bucklin, Randolph E., and Sunil Gupta. "Commercial Use of UPC Scanner Data: Industry and Academic Perspectives." Marketing Science 18, no. 3 (1999): 247–273.
Manchanda, Puneet, Asim Ansari, and Sunil Gupta. The "Shopping Basket": A Model for Multi-Category Purchase Incidence Decision. Marketing Science 18, no. 2 (1999): 95–115.
Jedidi, Kamel, Carl F. Mela, and Sunil Gupta. "Managing Advertising and Promotion for Long-Run Profitability." Marketing Science 18, no. 1 (1999): 1–22. (Winner of Marketing Science Institute Best Paper Award To honor the authors of the MSI working papers that have made the most significant contribution to marketing practice and thought presented by Marketing Science Institute.)
Balasubramanian, Sridhar, Sunil Gupta, Wagner Kamakura, and Michel Wedel. "Modeling Large Data Sets in Marketing." Special Issue on Large Data Sets in Business Economics. Statistica Neerlandica 52, no. 3 (November 1998).
Bucklin, Randolph E., Sunil Gupta, and S. Siddarth. "Modelling the Effect of Purchase Quantity on Consumer Choice of Product Assortment." Journal of Forecasting 17, nos. 3-4 (June–July 1998): 281–301.
Mela, Carl, Sunil Gupta, and Kamel Jedidi. "Assessing Long-Term Promotional Influences on Market Structure." International Journal of Research in Marketing 15, no. 2 (May 1998): 89–108. (Winner of International Journal of Research in Marketing. Best Paper Award.)
Bucklin, Randolph E., Sunil Gupta, and S. Siddarth. "Determining Segmentation in Sales Response Across Consumer Purchase Behaviors." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 35 (May 1998): 189–197.
Russell, Gary, David Bell, Anand Bodapati, Christina Brown, Joengwen Chiang, Gary Gaeth, Sunil Gupta, and Puneet Manchanda. "Perspectives on Multiple Category Choice." Marketing Letters 8, no. 3 (July 1997): 297–305.
Mela, Carl, Sunil Gupta, and Donald R. Lehmann. "Long Term Impact of Promotion and Advertising on Consumer Brand Choice." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 34 (May 1997): 248–261. (.)
Dillon, William R., and Sunil Gupta. "A Segment-Level Model of Category Volume and Brand Choice." Marketing Science 15, no. 1 (1996): 38–59.
Bucklin, Randolph E., Sunil Gupta, and Sangman Han. "A Brand's Eye View of Response Segmentation in Consumer Choice Behavior." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 32 (February 1995): 66–74.
Bockenholt, Ulf, Melinda S. de Borrero, Ham Bozdogan, Wayne DeSarbo, William R. Dillon, Sunil Gupta, Wagner Kamakura, Ajith Kumar, V. Ramaswamy, and Michael Zenor. "Issues in the Estimation and Application of Latent Structure Models of Choice." Marketing Letters 5, no. 4 (October 1994): 323–334.
Gupta, Sunil. "Reflections on 'Impact of Sales Promotions on When, What, and How Much to Buy'." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 30 (November 1993): 522–524.
Gupta, Sunil, and Lee G. Cooper. "The Discounting of Discounts and Promotion Thresholds." Journal of Consumer Research 19 (December 1992): 401–411.
Bucklin, Randolph E., and Sunil Gupta. "Brand Choice, Purchase Incidence, and Segmentation: An Integrated Modeling Approach." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 29 (May 1992): 201–215. (Finalist for the 1997 O'Dell Award, Journal of Marketing Research.)
Gupta, Sunil, and Donald G. Morrison. "Estimating Heterogeneity in Consumers' Purchase Rates." Marketing Science 10 (summer 1991): 264–269.
Gupta, Sunil. "Stochastic Models of Interpurchase Time with Time-Dependent Covariates." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 28 (February 1991): 1–15.
Lehmann, Donald R., and Sunil Gupta. "PACM: A Two Stage Procedure for Analyzing Structural Models." Applied Psychological Measurement 13 (September 1989): 301–321.
Gupta, Sunil. "Impact of Sales Promotions on When, What, and How Much to Buy." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 25 (November 1988): 342–355. (.)
DeSarbo, Wayne S., Donald R. Lehmann, Morris B. Holbrook, William J. Havlena, and Sunil Gupta. "A Stochastic Three-Way Unfolding Model for Asymmetric Binary Data." Applied Psychological Measurement 11 (December 1987): 397–418.
