Academia in Court: How Marketing Scholarship Informs The Law
Impact at JMR, 2022
In their article “Academia in Court: How Marketing Scholarship Informs The Law,” coauthors from Analysis Group, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University underscore the value of rigorous academic marketing research in high-stakes litigation.
In the article, affiliated expert David Reibstein (Wharton), Managing Principal T. Christopher Borek, Principal Robert L. Vigil, and Suneal Bedi (Kelley) describe the increasing frequency with which the work of academic marketing and consumer behavior experts is being used in litigation spanning a wide variety of issues, including intellectual property, consumer protection and false advertising, product liability, privacy, and tax. These experts utilize complex survey tools, assess harm to consumers, and employ other techniques to assess the specific questions at issue. A crucial point the authors make is that the rigor of expert analysis is of particular importance to the courts, and as a result, experts’ analyses go through a review process similar to peer review. “Our judicial system relies on marketing concepts,” the authors write, and the courts’ “reliance on marketing research will likely only increase as academia improves best practices and uncovers new methods for analyzing consumer behavior.”
The article was featured in “Impact at JMR,” the online companion to the Journal of Marketing Research.