Marketing Professor Assigns Practical Projects for Lifelong Lessons

Monika Kukar-Kinney was born and raised in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. About the size of New Jersey, Slovenia has a population of two million. After the fall of Communism, Slovenia became an independent nation in 1991 and escaped much of the damage that ravaged Croatia and Bosnia. In 2004, Slovenia joined the European Union, leading to further economic changes.

Dr. Kukar-Kinney was educated in Slovenia during this time of economic change. This transition gave her ample subject material for her economics thesis. She studied management investment companies in Slovenia that were set up to privatize previously state-owned companies.

She first came to the U.S. as an undergraduate exchange student at Indiana University in Bloomington. She relays that the three marketing courses she took sparked her interest in consumer marketing.

After graduating from the University of Ljubljana, Dr. Kukar-Kinney conducted marketing research for a consulting firm in Slovenia. Then, she decided to return to the U.S. and completed her Ph.D. at Indiana University.

She joined University of Richmond in 2003, and now teaches Marketing Research and Database Marketing courses. Dr. Kukar-Kinney finds teaching at the Robins School very rewarding because of the small class size, which allows her to establish a more personal connection with students.

"Having few students and teaching them for more than one class, you really get to know them well -- there is much more interaction," she states. She finds her students are very motivated. Several students have proposed independent research studies or become research assistants after having taken one of her classes. "Their role in real-world research projects can be a wonderful addition to their resume--whether going to graduate school or seeking a marketing job."

She believes students learn the most from actually doing. So she assigns practical projects that promote hands-on learning. In her marketing research class, students are required to do a large project in which they go through the entire research process. Working as a group, students select an actual small business and offer them free marketing research.

"Later on, they may not remember what they read in the textbook, but they will remember what they did in their project," she says.

Like most professors, Dr. Kukar-Kinney juggles teaching with several research projects. One recent study, co-authored with University of Richmond colleagues Dr. Nancy Ridgway and Dr. Kent Monroe and under review at the Journal of Consumer Research, examines consumers' compulsive buying tendencies and how to measure them.

Similarly, she co-authored a study titled, "Does Excessive Buying for Self Relate to Spending on Pets?" with the two University of Richmond colleagues and a former Robins School of Business student. They found that compulsive buyers tend to buy more excessively for their pets, too. "It is an emotional outlet for them -- buying and caring for their pets fulfills an unmet need," she adds.

Dr. Kukar-Kinney and her husband Eric have two children, ages five and seven. They spent several weeks in Europe this past summer. Dr. Kukar-Kinney presented two of her research projects at the European Association for Consumer Research Conference in Milan, Italy. They also visited Dr. Kukar-Kinney's family in Slovenia. "Our children are bilingual. It's nice to bring them back to the country so they can brush up on their Slovene," she remarks. Dr. Kukar-Kinney enjoys the outdoors including hiking and skiing, but misses swimming in the Adriatic Sea.

During May 15 -- June 3, three Robins School faculty members, Dr. Nezih Altay, Dr. Dana-Nicoleta Lascu, and Dr. Jonathan Wight, joined a team of University of Richmond faculty traveling throughout China, Tibet and Taiwan on the Faculty Seminar Abroad.

The Faculty Seminar Abroad has taken faculty to countries all over the world since its inception in 1989. In these countries, faculty meet with academic counterparts, political and business figures, and visit universities and important cultural sites.

The goal of this years' visit, along with increased cultural understanding, was to establish faculty and student exchange programs, increasing the number of students who study in China or Taiwan and the number of Chinese and Taiwanese students and faculty who come to Richmond.

"As a professor of operations management I've read a lot about manufacturing in China but actually being there and talking to Chinese and American officials definitely widens your view. As a result of this trip I feel more confident about discussing business in China and Taiwan in the classroom," explained Dr. Nezih Altay, Assistant Professor of Management.

The seminar gives faculty an opportunity to gain new international, inter-disciplinary knowledge about a region currently significant to the world and curricular needs. It encourages faculty to use newly acquired knowledge in teaching new and existing courses, and to support existing and develop new exchange relationships with institutions abroad.

The faculty members visited Taipei, Beijing, Lhasa, Kunming, and Shanghai. Highlights of the visit included breakfast with Ma Ying-jeou, KMT's nominee for the 2008 Taiwanese Presidential Election; meeting peer faculty at several world-renowned universities; and visiting the Great Wall of China, Forbidden City and Lhasa, Tibet, home of the Dalai Lama.

The research of three Robins School finance professors has struck a chord with the media this year. Dr. Tom Arnold, Dr. John Earl, and Dr. David North's article published in The Financial Analysts Journal called "Are Cover Stories Effective Contrarian Indicators?" has been featured in several national and international media outlets throughout the spring and summer. In addition to prominent stories in The Economist, CNBC television and radio, and The New York Times, articles and discussions of the paper include a number of investment newsletters, investment blogs, and international media outlets in Israel, the Netherlands, Russia, and Germany. A mention of the article and its implications to individual investors is forthcoming in Better Investing magazine.

In this research, Arnold, Earl and North studied how a company's stock responds to a cover story in BusinessWeek, Fortune, and Forbes. They looked at cover stories over a 20-year time period and found that positive stories typically end superior performance and negative news typically ends poor performance. In essence, the appearance of a cover story tends to indicate the end of abnormal performance and people who trade based on these articles will not get ahead in the market.

To read the full journal article, click here.

The Robins School is excited to welcome our new faculty members. We have six new faculty joining the Robins School for 2007-2008. Two are new tenure-track faculty, 4 are visiting faculty, and 2 are new part-time faculty. Welcome!

Our two new tenure-track faculty members are Jonathan Whitaker and Adam Marquardt. Whitaker joins the faculty as Assistant Professor of Management. His areas of teaching are Information Technology and Organizational Management and his current research focuses on Business Process Outsourcing. He recently received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

Adam Marquardt joins the Robins School as Assistant Professor of Marketing. Marquardt recently completed his Ph.D. at the University of Oregon. His research explores the role of stakeholder relationships in brand development within sports, entertainment, and entrepreneurial contexts.

The visiting faculty for the 2007-2008 school year are Volker Grzimek, Craig Heinicke, Hari Saran Luitel, and Michael Provance. Grzimek, from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, is Visiting Instructor of Economics, teaching Statistics and Macroeconomics. Heinicke, joining us from the faculty at Baldwin-Wallace College, is Visiting Professor of Economics. Heinicke is teaching Microeconomics and Macroeconomics at the Robins School. Luitel, Visiting Lecturer in Economics, joins us from St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. Dr. Luitel will be teaching Environmental Economics. Michael Provance, from the University of Maryland, is Visiting Instructor of Management, teaching courses in Strategic Management.

Our two new adjunct faculty members are Kiersten Maryott and Mark Huff. Maryott is Adjunct Lecturer in Marketing and is teaching Consumer Behavior. Huff is an Adjunct Instructor in the Accounting Department where he will be teaching Managerial Accounting.

Dr. Gabriel Asaftei, Assistant Professor of Economics, was a presenter at the European Financial Management Association Conference in Spain on June 1st. His presentation was entitled "The contribution of product mix over productivity and technical change in U.S. Banking." Dr. Asaftei teaches Principles of Macroeconomics and Comparative Economic Systems. His research interests are banking, economic convergence, and econometrics.

Dr. Richard Coughlan, Associate Dean of Graduate & Executive Education and Associate Professor of Management, wrote an article "Designing the MBA of Tomorrow" to be published in the Design Management Review. Dr. Coughlan oversees the MBA and Executive Education programs at the Robins School, where he teaches and studies Business Ethics, Negotiations, and Ethical Decision Making.

Joe Ben Hoyle, Associate Professor of Accounting, co-authored two accounting books published this year. "Advanced Accounting" (9th ed.) and "Essentials of Advanced Accounting" (3rd ed.) were published by McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Professor Hoyle, who has received numerous awards for his teaching, focuses his research on accounting education. At the Robins School he teaches Advanced Accounting, Intermediate Accounting II, and Introduction to Financial Accounting.

Dr. Dana Lascu, Professor of Marketing, published "Essentials of Marketing", a textbook co-written with Kenneth Clow and published by Thomson-Atomic Dog Publishing. Dr. Lascu teaches International Marketing, Marketing Management, Problems in Marketing, and International Marketing Research. Her research focuses on international marketing strategy.

Dr. Jonathan Wight, Professor of Economics, had his book "Teaching the Ethical Foundations of Economics", recently published by the National Council on Economic Education. Dr. Wight teaches Principles of Economics, Economic Development in Asia, Africa, & Latin America, and The U.S. in a Global Economy. He researches moral foundations of capitalism, including extensive research on Adam Smith, and health economics in developing countries.