Gerald Zaltman | A Brief Biography

Gerald Zaltman is the Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration Emeritus at the Harvard Business School. He is a co-founder and senior partner in the research based consulting firm of Olson Zaltman Associates whose clients include some of the world’s most respected firms and brands.

Professor Zaltman’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Fortune Magazine, Forbes, US News & World Report, Time, Fast Company Magazine, American Demographics, and other major publications.  Professor Zaltman is a consultant to corporations around the globe and frequent keynote speaker at major conferences.  He holds three patents for market research tools including the patent on the use of neuroimaging in marketing.  Another patent, ZMET, is used around the world by major firms and international agencies.  It has been described by several writers as the most significant innovation in market research in more than two decades.

Professor Zaltman has authored numerous books in the areas of social change, marketing, and the use of knowledge and has published widely in the major journals in marketing and the social sciences. He is a current or past member of the editorial boards of numerous journals in marketing and the social sciences.  He is a past President of the Association for Consumer Research.

His awards include the AMA McGraw Hill/Irwin Distinguished Marketing Educator Award in 1989, The Association for Consumer Research Distinguished Fellow Award in 1990, the Knowledge Utilization Society’s Thomas J. Kiresuk Award for Excellence in Scientific Research in 1992, the JAI Press Distinguished Scholar Award from the Society for Marketing Advances in 2000, the ARF Member Recognition Award in 2007, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Buck Weaver Award sponsored by General Motors in 2008 for outstanding work in bringing knowledge and practice together. He was named an AMA Fellow in 2015.

Professor Zaltman holds a Ph.D in sociology from The Johns Hopkins University, an M.B.A from The University of Chicago, and a B.A. from Bates College. He enjoys photography, boating, and fishing and hiking in Alaska.

Jag Sheth | A Brief Biography

Jagdish Sheth was born the youngest of six children in Burma (now known as Myanmar) where his father was a rice merchant. The family moved to India after the Japanese invasion in 1941. Growing up, Sheth was influenced by two older brothers: his brother Humatlal (16 years older) opened a shop that sold jewelry boxes and brother Gulab Chand (14 years older) was a teacher and joined Mahatma Gandhi’s independence movement. This blend of business sense and academic interest continue to guide Sheth’s decisions.

Based on the advice of a family friend, Sheth went to the United States for an MBA and ended up at Pittsburgh knowing nothing about the city or climate. There he met renowned scholar, and future mentor, John Howard who recruited Sheth into a Marketing PhD program. Howard and Sheth would evntually collaborate on The Theory of Buyer Behavior.

After leaving Pittsburgh, Sheth taught at a number of institutions, most prominently at University of Illinois, University of Southern California, and Emory University. He founded and led two centers: Center for Telecommunications Management and Center for Relationship Marketing. In addition, Sheth helped establish the first Indian Institute of Management.

Sheth’s diverse research interests include consumer behavior, global marketing and emerging markets, healthcare marketing, relationship marketing, and IT/telecommunications marketing.

He currently resides near Atlanta Georgia with his wife Madhu and continues to teach at Emory University where his oldest of two children is also on the faculty.