Mark Ratchford

Assistant Professor of Marketing

Subject Area(s): Marketing

Professor Ratchford is an expert in consumer and managerial decision making and biases, as well as models of marketing strategy. He joined the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management after completing his Ph.D. in marketing at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he taught marketing research and consumer behavior and was awarded the Gerald Hart Research Fellowship and the University Fellowship.

Among his primary research interests are strategic alliances between firms, consumer perceptions of price fairness, new technology adoption, and choice deferral. Professor Ratchford’s research has been published in the Journal of Business Research, Advances in Consumer Research, and the Sawtooth Software Conference Proceedings, and he has presented his work at several major conferences, including the Association for Consumer Research Conference and INFORMS Marketing Science Conference. In 2006, he was honored with the Best Paper Award at the American Marketing Association Winter Educators Conference. He is an AMA-Sheth Doctoral Consortium Fellow, and serves as a conference referee for the Association for Consumer Research.

Earlier in his career, Professor Ratchford served in various strategic telecommunication network analyst roles for ATX Telecommunications, Boat America Corporation, Teligent, Inc., and PacifiCorp. He also served as Director of Industry Affairs for the Wireless Communications Association International in Washington, D.C.

Professor Ratchford is affiliated with several other professional organizations, including the American Marketing Association, Association for Consumer Research, Society for Consumer Psychology and INFORMS, and is a member of the professional business fraternity Alpha Kappa Psi.

Education:
B.A., Virginia Polytechnic Institute, 1994
M.B.A., Rochester, 2004
Ph.D., Colorado, 2010

Research Interest(s):
Economic and psychological models of managerial and consumer decisions in marketing; coalitions in marketing channels; communication in marketing networks; perceptions of price fairness; ingredient branding and price competition

Area(s) of Expertise:
Marketing channels, consumer behavior, market management and strategy, social networks