Simha Mummalaneni

Research

Publications

1. Email Campaigns that Suit the Candidate: Leveraging Automated Text Analysis to Increase Political Donations (with Rebecca Jen-Hui Wang and Mathew S. Isaac)
Journal of Interactive Marketing (2024).   [link]   [pdf]
Political candidates can increase their campaign donations by carefully crafting their emails to emphasize unique textual characteristics that resonate with their potential donors.


2. Making a Smooth Exit? Menthol Bans and Cigarette Sales in Massachusetts (with Ali Goli and Pradeep K. Chintagunta)
Marketing Science (2024).   [link]   [pdf]   [SSRN]   [UW News summary]   [CBR summary]
Statewide bans on menthol cigarettes are relatively ineffective because of widespread cross-border shopping for cigarettes.


3. Show and Sell: Studying the Effects of Branded Cigarette Product Placement in TV Shows on Cigarette Sales (with Ali Goli, Pradeep K. Chintagunta, and Sanjay K. Dhar)
Marketing Science (2022).   [link]   [pdf]   [SSRN]   [CBR summary]   [CBR video]
TV product placement for cigarette brands increases sales for the brand portrayed on screen, its direct competitors, and the cigarette category as a whole.


4. Maximizing the Benefits of B2B Supplier Diversification (with Jonathan Z. Zhang)
MIT Sloan Management Review (2020).   [link]   [pdf]
Supplier diversity initiatives are a savvy business move as well as an investment in social responsibility.

Working papers

1. How Do Content Producers Respond to Engagement on Social Media Platforms? (with Hema Yoganarasimhan and Varad Pathak)   [SSRN]
Social media companies can improve overall platform outcomes by identifying users who respond very positively to receiving engagement from others, and then providing them with targeted interventions.


2. Gender Diversity on Cable News: An Analysis of On-Screen Talent and Viewership (with Ali Goli)   [SSRN]
Cable news networks can improve viewership outcomes by providing women with a greater share of screen time.


3. Using Diversion Ratios as a Measure of Brand Performance for Product Line Decisions (with Jonathan Z. Zhang)   [pdf]
After removing a product from store shelves, brands and retailers can use diversion ratios to monitor and quantify consumers’ switching behavior.


4. Affirmative Action as a Cost Cutting Tool in Procurement Markets   [pdf]
Providing preferential treatment to small, women-owned, and minority-owned vendors can reduce purchasing costs for buyers in B2B markets.


5. Vendor Pricing and Participation in Business Markets with Affirmative Action Policies   [pdf]
Affirmative action programs in B2B markets have a strong effect on vendors’ decisions regarding whether to bid on contracts, but they do not affect vendors’ pricing decisions.


6. Buyer Biases and Relationships in Government Procurement Markets
When given ownership details about vendors, buyers in online B2B markets display a bias against purchasing from women-owned and minority-owned vendors.

Teaching

Courses

1. Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing uses an analytics-centered approach to understand how to improve companies’ online advertising, email marketing, and mobile marketing.

This course focuses on how to measure the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns and improve their profitability by using data analytics and A/B experiments in this context.


2. Customer Analytics
Customer Analytics addresses how to use data analytics to learn about individual customers and market to them throughout the entire customer life cycle.

This course focuses on how companies can use individual-level data to target customers, send them individualized offers, predict their purchasing patterns, recommend new products to them, and retain them over the long run.


3. Digital Marketing Analytics
Digital Marketing Analytics focuses on using data analytics to improve digital marketing efforts.

In this course, students will learn how to analyze digital marketing data, evaluate the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns, and improve companies’ digital marketing strategies.


4. Advanced Marketing Strategy
Advanced Marketing Strategy focuses on understanding, developing, and evaluating marketing strategies throughout the product life cycle.

A good marketing strategy ensures that a company's marketing decisions are internally consistent and well-suited for the competitive situation at hand. In this course, students will learn how to develop a marketing strategy that will yield long-term success.


5. Business to Business Marketing
Business to Business (B2B) Marketing addresses how to understand, create, and deliver value when selling goods and services to other businesses, governments, and institutional customers.

In this course, students will learn how business markets differ from consumer markets, how to assess opportunities in business markets, and how to make marketing decisions that enable a B2B company to generate and deliver value for itself, its business partners, and its customers.

Honors and Awards

1. PhD Program Mentoring Award (2024)


2. PACCAR Award for Excellence in Teaching (2023)   [Foster Magazine summary]


3. MBA Professor of the Year (2022)


4. Dean's Excellence Award for Graduate Teaching (2020)

CV

Contact