Mansur Khamitov, PhD ’18 candidate, is hoping to live up to his new title of “rising star” and make his mark in the field of consumer behaviour research.
Khamitov has been named the 2018 Rising Star from the American Marketing Association’s (AMA) Consumer Behaviour Special Interest Group for his demonstrated research productivity and potential in the field. He will receive the award at the AMA’s Winter Educators’ Conference in New Orleans Feb. 23-25. The Rising Star Award is one of the more prestigious and competitive awards in the field and Khamitov said he’s honoured to be chosen for it.
“I’m happy and humbled. The previous recipients are superb, productive, and brilliant. I hope to follow in their footsteps,” he said. “I’m excited to meet the other award recipients and the panel members because they are senior researchers and respected scholars in the field.”
Khamitov already has several research publications under his belt and his dissertation work is also in the later rounds of consideration for publication. His dissertation, “Disentangling the Differential Static and Dynamic Effects of Various Brand Relationship Strength Metrics on Brand Loyalty,” with Associate Professor Matt Thomson and Assistant Professor Xin (Shane) Wang, looks at how people’s relationships with brands affect brand loyalty. The large-scale project involves around 400,000 people in 46 countries. It already won the Society for Marketing Advances Best Dissertation Proposal Award in 2016.
From industry to research
He also has hands-on experience in the industry and worked in brand management for Procter & Gamble and Polpharma SA Pharmaceutical Works.
While doing his PhD at Ivey, he has been volunteering with the Association for Consumer Research and teaching the Integrated Marketing Communications course at Western University.
Together these experiences may have helped him to qualify for the award and he said his industry experience in particular has influenced his current research and teaching.
“I think my industry experience – some of the issues I had and some of the challenges I went through – definitely informs my research and my teaching,” he said. “It has helped me to be more relevant in the classroom and a better-rounded scholar.”
Khamitov said he did his MBA in Marketing while working in the industry and realized he wanted to continue in the academic world and obtain his PhD. Ivey’s PhD program was a good fit in terms of his research interests.
“There were a lot of things that attracted me to Ivey. It has a top-tier research culture, and when I looked at the faculty profiles and their publications and interests, I definitely saw a good fit. I thought they could groom me into a better scholar,” he said.
Khamitov recently accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Marketing at Nanyang Business School in Singapore, which will begin in August, and he said he is looking forward to continuing his research there.
