Rajiv Lal Expert Stanley Roth, Sr. Professor of Retailing, Harvard Business School

Dr. Lal is a member of the faculty of the Harvard Business School where he supervises the retailing curriculum and has served as the course head for Marketing.

Professor Lal was a professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business starting in 1982, the Thomas Carroll Ford Foundation Vesting Professor at Harvard Business School for 1997-1998, and a visiting professor of Marketing at INSEAD, France in 1986, 1988, 1992 and 1993.

Professor Lal's research includes exploration of: the future of department stores in America; how to build customer centric retail organizations; successful retail strategies for global expansion; the impact of using the Internet as a channel of distribution on a retailer's pricing, merchandising and branding strategy; the impact of competition between different retail formats; and the consequences of the increasing use of store brands by grocery retailers on store loyalty. Professor Lal has also studied pricing, trade promotions and salesforce compensation plans. In 1985, his dissertation research won the award for the best paper published in Marketing Science and Management Science. Dr. Lal is an Area Editor for Marketing Science.

He completed his mechanical engineering degree at the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, India and received his Ph.D, in Industrial Administration from Carnegie-Mellon University.