Praveen Kopalle Honored with Lifetime Achievement Award

As stated in the announcement of the award from the AMA, “the Churchill award recognizes an individual’s contribution to marketing research including new methodologies, seminal publications, books, awards, and other notable contributions. A panel of world-renowned marketing scholars including past winners of the Churchill award and past editors of top marketing journals selected the winner.”

“I am totally humbled by this award,” Kopalle said. “If you see the names of the previous winners, they are the giants in marketing academic community, and I am standing on their shoulders bowing my head.” Kopalle is the first person from Tuck to win this award.

Kopalle, who also serves as the area chair of the Marketing Group at Tuck, specializes in machine learning/artificial intelligence, pricing, new products/innovation, promotions, loyalty programs, and online/offline retailing. He teaches the elective Retail Pricing Analytics, and the Tuck Integrative Experiential Learning program.

A member of the Tuck faculty since 1996, Kopalle has deployed “multi-method” approaches in his research papers, many of which have been published in the top scholarly marketing and management journals, such as Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Management Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Journal of Retailing. His multi-methods have ranged from analytical models, game theory and structural models, econometric and Bayesian methods, machine learning and artificial intelligence, to conceptual approaches, field and lab studies, survey methodology, and qualitative research that addresses marketing research problems. The committee noted that this unique and comprehensive approach was a key component of its decision to select Kopalle for this year’s award, stating “Kopalle has been a fine exponent of multi-method approaches in his impactful and award-winning papers over three decades.”

The Churchill Award is the latest honor in a long list of awards Kopalle has received during his career. Some of these awards include the 2018 Lifetime Award by the American Marketing Association’s Retailing and Pricing Special Interest Group (SIG); 2015 Core Teaching Excellence Award at Tuck, the 2005 John Little Award; Finalist for 2006 John Little Award; the 2014 Davidson award; Runner-up, 2012, 2018, 2022 Davidson award; 2022 Distinguished Alumnus, Osmania University, and 2011 Distinguished Alumni Award, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India.

In concluding the announcement of the award, the AMA stated, “Professor Kopalle has made significant methodological contributions to marketing research, notably in bringing encoder-decoder transformer architecture to marketing applications, algorithmic pricing, emergent consumers, big data, and machine learning. His innovative work demonstrates key contributions in addressing marketing challenges like dynamic pricing, retailing, loyalty programs, and product quality. Professor Kopalle’s research is creative, impactful, and widely recognized in the field.”

Professor Kopalle will receive the award at the Marketing Research SIG reception and award ceremony during the 2024 Summer AMA Conference in Boston, MA on August 17.