Guenter J. Hitsch studies quantitative marketing and industrial organization, empirical models of consumer choice and competition, the economics and marketing of new products, and the economics of dating and marriage markets. "I've been able to make progress in these areas by advancing statistical methods, especially computational techniques that allow me to tackle previously unsolvable, complex decision problems," he explains. Much of his research focuses on dynamic marketing strategies, i.e., situations where marketing decisions that firms make today have effects on future sales, profits, and competitive reactions. Current examples of this research are the investigations of pricing under switching costs between brands or service providers, and the examination of pricing dynamics and industry evolution in hardware/software markets with indirect network effects, such as Blu-ray versus HD-DVD. Hitsch's research has been widely published and he has been invited to give talks at the University of California at Berkeley, Harvard University, Stanford University, Columbia University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He is the recipient of two Kilts Center Fellowships, a True North Communications Inc. Scholarship, and a Fellowship from the Ministry of Science in Austria. Hitsch is a member of the American Economic Association, American Marketing Association, the Econometric Society, and INFORMS.
He earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Vienna in 1995. Hitsch received a master's degree in economics in 1997 and a master's degree in economics in 1998, as well as a PhD in economics in 2001 from Yale. He joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 2001.
Hitsch enjoys travel, skiing, cooking, and movies. He wants his students to learn that "good marketing isn't fluffy."
Selected Publications
With Jean-Pierre Dubé, Peter Rossi, and Maria Ana Vitorino, "Category Pricing with State Dependent Utility," Marketing Science 27 (3) (2008).
"An Empirical Model of Optimal Dynamic Product Launch and Exit Under Demand Uncertainty," Marketing Science, 25 (1) (2006).
With Jean-Pierre Dubé and Puneet Manchanda, "An Empirical Model of Advertising Dynamics," Quantitative Marketing and Economics, 3 (2005).
