UNH Today

Even though Billur Akdeniz has known since she was an undergraduate economics major that she would rather work in academia than the business world, her work as an associate professor of marketing keeps her very connected to business practice. 

As an associate professor of marketing in Paul College, Akdeniz uses empirical modeling to solve managerial problems in the new product development, market signaling, and international marketing areas.

She chose to focus in marketing after studying economics because it allowed her to combine her background in economics with business strategy.

“Trying to understand and solve marketing strategy problems while using my background in economic theories and econometric techniques has been a great inspiration,” she said. 

Akdeniz has used those theories and techniques to study a range of marketing topics. Recent examples include the role of crowdsourcing in innovation, and understanding how the stock market reacts to new product preannouncements in the automotive industry.

“Despite the fundamental assumption that investors can immediately assess how a marketing action, such as a product preannouncement, will affect company value and future product performance, our findings show that investors correctly predict a new product’s future performance only half of the time,” she said. “Thus, our study cautions managers against the use of these market reactions as a sole yardstick to assess future performance. Instead, use them as a gauge for future performance only under specific conditions, such as when preannouncements are made in a detailed manner, and in product categories with high brand reputation.”