8:17 a.m., April 19, 2010----Ajay Manrai, professor of marketing and faculty director of Graduate and Executive Programs in the University of Delaware's Lerner College of Business and Economics, has won a Fulbright-Nehru Research Scholar Award and will be in India during the spring semester of 2011.

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Manrai, who holds a doctorate in marketing from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, India (IIMA), has accepted host invitations from the IIMA, the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India, and the Anand Group of Companies in New Delhi.

“It is a huge honor to have received this award, which places me as a research ambassador between the United States and India,” Manrai said.

Manrai will be researching the similarities and differences in the marketing strategies of Indian companies, and multinational companies with origins in both the United States and abroad.

His research will take him throughout all of India and across industries, including consumer package goods and services, so that he may conduct a comprehensive analysis.

Although his appointment does not begin until next spring, Manrai plans to begin identifying marketing managers via his academic and professional networks immediately.

“I will need a sample of about 360 companies to carry out this research,” he said. “With a response rate of about 20 percent, that means I will need to contact close to 1,800 companies to obtain a fair sample of marketing managers of different areas.”

Manrai, who also recently accepted the position of vice president-programs and president-elect for the International Management Development Association, joined the UD faculty in 1991. Prior to that, he served as a marketing faculty at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

His research interests include comparative studies of international marketing, cross-cultural/cross-national consumer behavior and modeling consumer decision-making (perceptions, evaluations, preference, and choice).

He has published over 85 research articles, including papers in reputed journals such as Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research and Psychometrika. Manrai has received many awards, honors and grants for excellence in research and teaching. He has traveled to over 50 countries on six continents.

Manrai serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Modeling in Management (JM2) and serves on the editorial boards of several journals including International Business Review, Journal of International Consumer Marketing, Journal of Transnational Management, and Marketing and Psychology.

The Fulbright Scholar Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, sends 800 U.S. faculty and professionals abroad each year to lecture and conduct research in a variety of fields.

Article by Kathryn A. Marrone