Portrait of Simha Mummalaneni

Simha Mummalaneni

Mason School of Business, William & Mary

I am an Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Mason School of Business at William & Mary. My research is broadly in the areas of marketing analytics and quantitative marketing, and some of my specific research interests include platforms, advertising, digital marketing, and retailing. Much of my research focuses on contexts where firms' marketing activities intersect with public policy and societal issues.

Research

Publications

How Do Content Producers Respond to Engagement on Social Media Platforms?
with Hema Yoganarasimhan and Varad Pathak
Marketing Science (2026) Vol. 45(4): 791 - 815

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.

Affirmative Action as a Cost Cutting Tool in Procurement Markets
Quantitative Marketing and Economics (2026) Vol. 24(3)

Providing preferential treatment to small, women-owned, and minority-owned vendors can reduce purchasing costs for buyers in B2B markets.

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) Vol. 59(4): 385 - 399

Political candidates can increase their campaign donations by carefully crafting their emails to emphasize unique textual characteristics that resonate with their potential donors.

Making a Smooth Exit? Menthol Bans and Cigarette Sales in Massachusetts
with Ali Goli and Pradeep K. Chintagunta
Marketing Science (2024) Vol. 43(3): 564 - 589

Statewide bans on menthol cigarettes are relatively ineffective because of widespread cross-border shopping for cigarettes.

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) Vol. 41(6): 1163 - 1180

TV product placement for cigarette brands increases sales for the brand portrayed on screen, its direct competitors, and the cigarette category as a whole.

Maximizing the Benefits of B2B Supplier Diversification
with Jonathan Z. Zhang
MIT Sloan Management Review (2020)

Supplier diversity initiatives are a savvy business move as well as an investment in social responsibility.

Working Papers

Frictionless Grocery: How Cashierless Stores Reshape Shopping Trips
with Zhe Zhang, Hyoduk Shin, and Jonathan Z. Zhang

Consumers who shop at cashierless "just walk out" grocery stores change how often they shop, when they shop, and what they buy, but they do not increase their overall spending.

Regulatory Incidence and Platform Fee Architecture: An Emerging Research Agenda for Marketplace Platforms after Wayfair
with Mark J. Tremblay

Online marketplace platforms can reduce sales tax responsiblities for the platform ecosystem by implementing consumer fees rather than merchant fees.

Representation, Responsiveness, and Ratings in Cable News
with Ali Goli

The on-screen gender balance of cable news shows is linked with how the show adjusts to changes in the daily news agenda.

Using Diversion Ratios as a Measure of Brand Performance for Product Line Decisions
with Jonathan Z. Zhang

After removing a product from store shelves, brands and retailers can use diversion ratios to monitor and quantify consumers' switching behavior.

Vendor Pricing and Participation in Business Markets with Affirmative Action Policies

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.

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

Marketing Research

Marketing Research helps businesses to better understand customers and the competitive marketplace through the analysis of qualitative or quantitative data. This course focuses on learning when to use different marketing research methods, how to communicate the findings, and how their insights can be used to make better marketing decisions.

Marketing Management

Marketing Management is a core class that focuses on introducing the key concepts of marketing. The class is organized around identifying, creating, and delivering value to customers. Students learn about the functional areas of marketing and practice making marketing decisions under uncertainty.

Marketing Analytics / Customer Analytics

Marketing Analytics addresses how to use data analytics to learn about individual customers and market to them throughout the entire customer life cycle. The course focuses on using 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.

Digital Marketing and Experimentation

Digital Marketing and Experimentation uses a measurement-centered approach to improve companies' online advertising, email marketing, and mobile marketing. This course focuses on measurement challenges in digital marketing and how to overcome those challenges by using A/B experiments and the right data comparisons.

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.

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.

Advanced Marketing Strategy

Advanced Marketing Strategy focuses on understanding, developing, and evaluating marketing strategies throughout the product life cycle. In this course, students will learn how to develop a marketing strategy that is internally consistent, well-suited for the competitive situation, and likely to yield long-term success.

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 deliver value for the whole ecosystem.

Honors and Awards

2024
PhD Program Mentoring Award
2023
PACCAR Award for Excellence in Teaching
2022
Full-Time MBA Professor of the Year
2020
Dean's Excellence Award for Graduate Teaching

Curriculum Vitae

Employment

2025–
Mason School of Business, William & Mary
Assistant Professor of Marketing
2024–25
Argyros College of Business and Economics, Chapman University
Assistant Professor of Marketing
2016–24
Foster School of Business, University of Washington
Assistant Professor of Marketing

Education

2016
Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Ph.D. in Marketing
2012
Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
M.S. in Marketing
2010
University of Chicago
A.B. in Economics & Political Science

Contact

Email
nmummalaneni@wm.edu
Office
Miller 3070
Mailing Address
Simha Mummalaneni
Raymond A. Mason School of Business
William & Mary
P.O. Box 8795
Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795
Street Address
Miller Hall
101 Ukrop Way
Williamsburg, VA 23185