Scholar with an eye on customer satisfaction

Dr.Gehan Dhameeth,
Associate Professor of Business, Chair of the Business Department and Data Analytics Department – Wells College being interviewed by Himadri Seth of the School of Journalism, Ithaca College, New York.

What is your research philosophy, and how does it manifest in your publications and beyond?

Well, research philosophy – there are different research philosophies where scholars use different approaches to interpret phenomena related to the world. A couple of them that come to my mind would be the Positivist, Pragmatist, and Interpretivist. Essentially my approach is Positivism. Where we depend more on an empirical aspect of the research. We develop hypotheses, collect data, model and test models, and then interpret certain phenomena and how they work when it comes to interactions of the variables.

Can you tell me more about your research interests, particularly in consumer behavior, marketing analytics, and organizational strategy?

Different scholars have their scholarly sweet spots, so it comes based on where they come from. When I say where they come from, it could be their continuous research investment, and the other angle would be the corporate experience that they come with. So based on these two domains, where I come from, I would like to focus more on how consumers behave. The current study I am collaborating on is a research paper on customer satisfaction measurement modeling based on online customer reviews. So, that’s one area, consumer behavior, more specifically customer satisfaction, where my entire investment in scholarship is. The other two areas, marketing analytics, are also interesting because they help us perform budget optimizations, brand positioning, market segmentation, targeting, forecasting, marketing mix optimization, product feature selection, satisfaction measurements, etc. And then the third area was for me to learn more about how the two sides, if we were to conceptualize a company to be in the center, internally how employees would change their behavior when the overall corporate strategies change and at the same time, due to that exact strategy change, how externally the consumers also will change their behavior. Say, for example, throwing out a new product, consumers change, and employees will also have to change how they think, apply, and so on. So that’s why I thought these three areas to be interesting for me.

What are innovative teaching techniques that you use?

For all my classes, I use a student-centered teaching approach. One example that I would like to refer to here is that I use in my classes, more specifically marketing class, where I use case-method teaching. This case-method teaching has three stages. First is the analysis, then the goal and strategy, and the last stage is the implementation. Now in my class, the innovative technique that I use is inside the class; we complete the first phase, which is analysis, but at the stage of goal setting and strategizing, I let the students walk around the campus in groups, not more than four. They walk around, and then they come back with their strategy. The reason for that is that many studies have shown that when motion is associated with the learning process, students learn more, very effectively. So that’s one innovative technique I use in my marketing class when using the case-method approach.

Having held various positions at different schools over the years, how has your teaching philosophy evolved?

Well, first of all, my philosophy about teaching is that learning should be accessible to all individuals in this world regardless of their socio-cultural-ethnic background. So, what I do to take this knowledge to every individual in the classroom, I use a more student-centered teaching approach. How do I do that- I use a specific model unique to me, and I call it the 10-3-10 model. Interesting model. In every class, I use ten minutes of my time to do a lecture, then three minutes of interaction, and then another ten minutes of reflection. By doing that, I think I’m helping everyone to gain the expected knowledge as the objective of the class to walk out with. So that’s my teaching philosophy.

What advice do you have for business students today?

The first thing that we need to understand is that the whole world is changing, so whether you’re a business student or any other, you have to be able to embrace this change. Especially for business students, compared to my time at their undergrad level, it is imperative that you take at least a couple of data-driven classes because that’s the current world that we’re dealing with. So, data-driven decision-making, especially for business students, is critical today. So I advise taking at least a couple of data analytics classes and getting oriented to apply the analytical skills in the future after graduation. In addition, as I explained, you need to consider time management, people skills, and presentation skills, which go beyond your regular business class learning.