Positive Marketing Knowhow from the C-Suite

High fashion and flawless marketing make their way to Fordham on Wednesday, Oct. 2 when Fordham Schools of Business’ Center for Positive Marketing launches its "Marketing Lessons from the C-Suite" with Tony Spring, president and COO of Bloomingdale's. Spring will deliver a talk titled, "Inside the Brown Bag: What Makes Bloomingdale's Bloomingdale's." The event, to be held at the Lincoln Center Campus’ South Lounge, promises to be a packed house.

The series will bring successful business executives from a variety of sectors to hold forth on subjects that don't always full under the purview of their official title, said Dawn Lerman, Ph.D., associate dean of graduate business education and executive director of the center.

"Often it's the case that students tend to look at things in the silos of which they’re studying, but every particular business function is impacted by every other business function," said Lerman. "Marketing lessons don’t necessarily come from the marketing department, they can come from the COO, CIO, CFO, and of course the CEO—the lessons really can come from anywhere."

The backbone of a business education often requires that business functions be taught separately, said Lerman, but curriculum must also provide perspective on how those parts come together.

The series aims to mesh these functions via the perspective of individuals who have worked their way up to the executive suite of the chief officers—"The C-suite."

"C-suite executives view business holistically because they experience it that way firsthand," said Lerman. "The series will present people at the top who have found ways to manage their career to get there."

Here's the lineup...

Tony Spring, president and COO of Bloomingdale's will be speaking at Lincoln Center Campus on Wednesday, Oct. 2, 6 p.m. in the South Lounge.

Chris McWilton, president of U.S. Markets and former CFO of MasterCard, will be speaking at Lincoln Center Campus on Thursday, Oct. 17, 6 p.m. in McMahon 109.

Salman Amin, COO-North American Markets, S.C. Johnson and Son, will be speaking at LC on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 1:30 p.m., Room TBD.

John Osborn, President and CEO of BBDO New York will be speaking at the Rose Hill campus on Monday, Nov. 11, time and room TBD.

For more information contact Linda Purcell, 212-636-6115, lpurcell2@fordham.edu.

Marketing Professor Earns Two Faculty Excellence Awards From GBA Students

Assistant Professor of Marketing Sertan Kabadayi, Ph.D., has been elected to receive two faculty awards by Fordham graduate business students.

One of the prizes, the Gladys and Henry Crown Award for Faculty Excellence, is given to a full-time faculty member in the Graduate School of Business Administration (GBA) whose exceptional performance and devotion to the school’s ideals and goals warrant extraordinary recognition.

The other, the Stanley Fuchs Faculty Award, is presented to a full-time faculty member who has made an impact on students through his or her dedication and commitment to the student body.

“Professor Kabadayi is an exceptional contributor to the School and the University, and we are proud that GBA students have chosen to recognize him with this double honor,” said David A. Gautschi, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration. “His diverse background in international industry, as well as his research interests, enable him to bring a global perspective to the classroom that can help our graduates compete in a today’s business environment.”

“If anyone deserves both, particularly at the same time, it’s Professor Kabadayi,” said Dawn Lerman, Ph.D., associate professor and area chair of marketing. “He is highly engaged with students in and beyond the classroom, and he demands a lot from them.

“This year, for students in his GBA classes, he purposely raised the bar—which was already quite high—to ensure that they worked hard and got the most out of class,” Lerman said.

Indeed, Kabadayi admits to challenging his students with an interactive teaching style that embodies a holistic approach of care for the whole person—a style that imparts lifelong learning skills to students.

“It is gratifying to me that students recognize the effort that I put into my teaching. They respond by putting effort into their learning,” he said. “I know that I am a demanding and challenging teacher who cares deeply about his students. My goal is to create active learners—not passive students.”

In addition to fulfilling his teaching load with distinction, Kabadayi has also accomplished significant research, with three published papers appearing this year.

“The Role of Wireless Service Provider (WSP) Trust on Consumer Acceptance of SMS Advertising,” written with Luke Kachersky, Ph.D., assistant professor of marketing, will appear in the International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising. “Choosing the Right Multiple Channel System to Minimize Transaction Costs” will appear in Industrial Marketing Management. Another paper, “Made In China But Sold At FAO Schwarz,” written with Lerman, was published in the International Marketing Review.

Kabadayi also authored an opinion piece in the Feb. 11 issue of Business Insider on the challenges AT&T faces after losing its iPhone monopoly.

He serves as faculty advisor to the Fordham GBA Student Marketing Society and is the academic director of both the Global Professional MBA Program and the recently announced Three-Continent Master of Global Management program.

Kabadayi joined the Fordham business faculty in 2005 after receiving his doctorate from Baruch College of the City University of New York. He will receive his awards on May 15 at the GBA Dean’s List and Awards Ceremony.

Marketing Professor Wins Outstanding Teacher Award

Assistant Professor of Marketing Luke Kachersky, Ph.D., has been awarded the 2011 Outstanding Marketing Teacher of the Year Award by the Academy of Marketing Science (AMS).

The academy cited Kachersky for his teaching, use of technology in the classroom, and assessments of student learning based on recommendations from peers, students and administrators.

“Luke does not just teach his students in the sense of imparting knowledge,” said Dawn Lerman, Ph.D., associate professor and area chair of marketing. “He also seeks to reach them and to engage them in ways that will benefit their classroom learning but also serve them outside of the classroom.”

This is not the first accolade Kachersky has received for his teaching abilities. He was honored in 2010 with the Cura Personalis Award for challenging students while providing them support to excel. He also earned the Marketing Area Teaching Excellence Award for 2009.

Among his many—and perhaps less official, noteworthy achievements—Kachersky has won praise from his students for his approach to teaching marketing research. That staple of marketing programs is, said Lerman, “notoriously feared by students and one that yields lower than average evaluations, regardless of the instructor.”

Kachersky reverses the teaching progression so that students learn data analysis before research design, allowing them to understand and appreciate nuances of the entire research process. He also incorporates social media into his courses to provide students with an understanding of how such media provide market insights.

“Ours is a dynamic field, perhaps the most among all courses of study in higher education,” Kachersky said. “We, as marketing professors, are charged with an insurmountable task of making sense of a field that changes continuously. If we embrace the process and the burden of struggling with this task, we can deliver much value to our students, enabling them to confront similarly unresolvable issues in their lives and careers.”

In addition to his teaching load, Kachersky is a busy scholar with two papers scheduled for publication this year: “Do Moniker Maladies Afflict Name Letter Brands? A Dual Process Theory of Name Letter Branding and Avoidance Effects” in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology; and “The Role of Wireless Service Provider Trust on Consumer Acceptance of SMS Advertising,” co-authored with his Fordham colleague, Assistant Professor of Marketing Sertan Kabadayi, Ph.D., in the International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising.

Kachersky is also one of the driving forces, along with Lerman and Associate Professor of Marketing Marcia Flicker, Ph.D., behind Fordham’s newest research center, the Center for Positive Marketing. The center studies marketing from the demand (consumers’) as opposed to the supply (marketers’) perspective.

Kachersky joined the Fordham business faculty in 2008 after receiving his doctorate from Baruch College of the City University of New York. He will receive his award, and make a presentation on his classroom success, in May at the AMS Annual Conference in Coral Gables, Fla.

--Syd Steinhardt