Dipankar Chakravarti appointed Sonny Merryman Inc. Professor in Pamplin College of Business
Dipankar Chakravarti has been appointed the Sonny Merryman Inc. Professor in the Department of Marketing at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business.
He is one of six new full-time faculty members at Pamplin this fall. Their addition reflects the college’s commitment to hiring tenured and tenure-track faculty to further strengthen its teaching, research, and business outreach, particularly in the areas of business intelligence and analytics, innovation through entrepreneurship, and international programs.
Chakravarti, who is based at Virginia Tech's National Capital Region campus, received his Ph.D. in industrial administration from Carnegie Mellon University, where he also earned a master’s degree in industrial administration. He has a bachelor’s degree in physics from Presidency College, University of Calcutta, India.
He joins Virginia Tech from the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, where he was a professor of marketing. As vice dean of programs, he led the design and successful launch of the Carey School’s Global MBA program and served as faculty director of its signature Innovation for Humanity program.
He is professor emeritus at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he was the Ortloff Professor of Business from 1995-2009. He has also served on the marketing faculties of the University of Arizona, Duke University, and the University of Florida. He served as interim dean at Colorado’s Leeds School and as department head of marketing at Arizona’s Eller School.
Chakravarti has taught a range of courses and seminars at the undergraduate, MBA, doctoral, and executive education levels. His recent assignments include the MBA courses: Managerial Decision Behavior, Social Entrepreneurship, Customer Relationship Management and B2B Marketing. His doctoral teaching focuses on managerial and consumer decision making and advanced marketing research methods.
His teaching recognitions include Johns Hopkins University’s 2013 Green Blue Jay Award, for the Innovation for Humanity course, in recognition of creativity and innovation in involving MBA students in hands-on learning opportunities emphasizing humanity and social responsibility. The course was cited in Forbes magazine’s list of the 10 most innovative, new business-school courses in 2010.
Chakravarti has written extensively on managerial and consumer decision making in marketing. His research has appeared in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Marketing Science, and Management Science, among others, and in scholarly books such as the Annual Review of Psychology. His work is widely cited and has received many recognitions, including a Journal of Consumer Research best paper award.
His current research focuses on healthcare decisions and the psychology of consumption decisions in poverty and development contexts.
A lifetime fellow of the Society for Consumer Psychology, Chakravarti has served as editor and editorial board member of the Journal of Consumer Psychology. He has also served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Marketing.
The Sonny Merryman Inc. Professorship was established in 1998 by Sonny Merryman Inc. and Floyd W. Merryman III to attract and retain eminent scholars in the Pamplin College of Business. Those who hold the professorship will retain the title until retirement or departure from the university.
