Barbara E. Kahn

Barbara E. Kahn is Patty and Jay H. Baker Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include brand loyalty, brand management, consumer choice, customer relationship management, customization, decisions under uncertainty/ambiguity, medical and financial services, price promotions, product assortments, retailing, and variety seeking. She has published extensively in leading academic journals and authored several books on marketing topics. Professor Kahn has held leadership roles, including Director of the Jay H. Baker Retailing Center and Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute. She also served as Dean and Schein Professor of Marketing at the University of Miami and Vice Dean of the Wharton undergraduate program. Her work has been featured in various media outlets, and she has been involved in numerous editorial and advisory roles within marketing academia.

Barbara E. Kahn's research focuses on consumer behavior, variety, retailing, visual marketing, and patient decision-making. Her work explores how factors like assortment structure, induced arousal, and ambient stimuli influence consumer choices and perceived variety. She investigates the impact of private versus public consumption, cross-category effects, and the role of visual versus verbal depictions in assortment processing. Her studies also examine consumer neuroscience, including EEG and eye tracking, to assess marketing stimuli. Additionally, she analyzes dynamic customer relationships and multichannel retailing environments. Her research contributes to understanding variety-seeking behavior, choice overload, and the challenges of assortment planning in retail.