Niraj Dawar is a Professor Emeritus from the marketing group at the Ivey Business School. He earned his PhD from Pennsylvania State University.
Niraj Dawar's research focuses on brand equity and brand management issues. His published papers on brand extensions, consumers use of brand and other signals as well as international consumer behaviour have appeared in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Harvard Business Review, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Marketing Letters, Journal of Business Research, the Journal of International Business Studies, and other outlets.
Niraj Dawar teaches PhD, MBA and undergraduate courses in marketing management and brand management, as well as in Executive Education programs. Prior to joining the Ivey Business School, he was Associate Professor of Marketing at INSEAD, France. He was also visiting scholar at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology during the fall of 1994 and 1995. During the Spring of 2000, he was the William Davidson Visiting Research Professor at the University of Michigan Business School. During the 2005-2006 academic year, he was Visiting Professor at INSEAD's Asia campus in Singapore.
Teaching
Marketing
Education
PhD, Penn State
BCom, India
PGDBM, India
Recent Refereed Articles
Dawar, N., 2018, "Marketing in the Age of Alexa", Harvard Business Review, May 96(3): 80 - 86.
Abstract: Last week, Google announced that, in an effort to bridge the “online ad–offline purchase” gap, it will begin to connect online ad exposure to brick-and-mortar sales. The company claims it will be able to track about 70% of all credit and debit card transactions and link them to online consumer behavior. These moves are big leaps forward for advertisers. Knowing that consumers who shop at Home Depot also tend to shop at Petsmart also drives decisions such as media purchases and placement, cross-promotions, and even store location for both companies. These advances also raise privacy concerns: do Google and Facebook know too much? Companies’ responses will need to hold up to scrutiny in a world where marketing becomes increasingly automated and where algorithms make most decisions about the targeting of advertising dollars. But better data is always a short-term advantage. Ultimately, marketers will need to learn to use the data to create new and better forms of value for customers.
Abstract: This research examines consumers’ attachment styles as a predictor of attributions of blame following a product-harm crisis. Though the interpersonal attachment literature suggests that consumers with the secure attachment style should attribute the least amount of blame to the brand, we introduce a novel and seemingly contradictory hypothesis. Because of the unique nature of brand relationships, we hypothesize that consumers with the fearful attachment style will attribute the least amount of blame to the brand. In an experiment, we find support for both hypotheses. Further, we find that these effects occur via different mechanisms. Whereas the secure attachment style decreases attributions of controllability, the fearful attachment style decreases attributions of stability. Though many relationship tendencies have been transferred from the interpersonal domain to the consumer domain, our findings remind researchers that brands are a distinct type of relationship partner.
Abstract: A cognitive level account of when and why radical innovations impact category representations of competing brands is developed and tested. The results suggest that competing brands are affected only when a dominant brand introduces a radical innovation that alters a core category attribute. Such an innovation leads consumers to see competing brands as less typical of the category with diminished evaluations. Crucially, neither core radical innovations introduced by a non-dominant brand nor equally radical innovations that alter peripheral (non-core) attributes have any impact on consumers’ perceptions of competing brands. Implications for consumer preference formation and competition in the context of radical innovation are drawn.
Abstract: Companies have long used perceptual mapping to understand how consumers perceive their brands relative to competitors’ and to find gaps in the marketplace and develop brand positions. But the business value of these maps is limited because they do not link a brand’s map position to market performance variables such as pricing and sales. In contrast, strategic tools such as the Boston Consulting Group matrix map brands on business measures such as market-share and market-growth rate, but do not map consumer perceptions of the marketplace. In this article, Niraj Dawar and Charan Bagga, present a novel type of brand map that captures brands’ relative position in the marketplace according to perceived centrality (how close they are to the core of category) and distinctiveness (how well they stand out from other brands). Where a brand falls on the C-D map has implications for sales, pricing, risk, and profitability. They show through an analysis of dozens of brands how this mapping can help firms determine a brand’s current and desired position, predict its marketplace performance, and devise and track marketing strategy and allocation.
Abstract: To increase consumer acceptance of novel products, firms often employ extension strategies, that is, launching new products under familiar brand names. Prototypical brands are among the most familiar in any product category, and, therefore, seem attractive candidates for extension efforts. But, by definition, prototypical brands and their product category show a strong association. Starting from a categorization theory perspective, prior research suggests that this association may hinder the extendibility of prototypical brands to products that belong to distant categories. Yet counter-intuitively, results from two studies focusing on novel extensions demonstrate that brand prototypicality increases rather than decreases consumer acceptance of novel extensions, in close as well as distant product categories. A mediation analysis provides evidence for the underlying mechanism by indicating that the risk-reducing advantage of prototypical brands outweighs their category-anchored rigidity.
Abstract: Can a company built on the ideas of scale and network effects unbundle its offering into multiple brands and still thrive? Facebook is about to find out.
Abstract: In the perennial tug of war between manufacturers and retailers, retailers seem to be winning. But manufacturers can benefit by understanding what type of business model a retailer emphasizes and tailoring their approaches accordingly.
Abstract: In many industries today, upstream activitiessuch as sourcing, production, and logisticsare being commoditized or outsourced, while downstream activities aimed at reducing customers’ costs and risks are emerging as the drivers of value creation and sources of competitive advantage. Downstream activitiessuch as delivering a product or information for specific consumption circumstancesare increasingly the reason customers choose one brand over another, and are the basis for customer loyalty. They also now account for a large share of companies’ costs. Yet business strategy continues to be driven by the ghost of the Industrial Revolution, long after the factories that used to be the primary sources of competitive advantage have been shuttered and off-shored. Companies are still organized around their production and their products, success is measured in terms of units moved, and organizational hopes are pinned on product pipelines. Production-related activities are honed to maximize throughput, and managers who worship efficiency are promoted. Businesses know what it takes to make and move stuff. The problem is, so does everybody else. This article outlines how companies that shift downstream need to shed fundamental assumptions inherent to the upstream business model.
Abstract: Barely has the hype from the launch of the iPhone 5s and 5c subsided that chatter about the iPhone 6 has begun. A larger screen size is rumored. Apple’s product innovation strategy places it on a punishing treadmill. If the company does not deliver new products or new features to the market’s expectations and calendar, investors get jittery and the stock price sags; competitors attempt to steal the lead, and to set a faster pace of innovation. Apple’s brand and customers’ loyalty to it may cushion the dips between new product introductions and help it to fend off the attacks of competitors and the demands of aggressive shareholders, but management is still held to a relentless pace of innovation. It must deliver or move over.
