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Marketing

Associate Professor of Marketing

Portrait of Chethana Achar, Faculty at the Kellogg School of Management

Chethana Achar studies consumer inference and persuasion in health, pharmaceutical, and regulated markets. Her current work sits at the frontier of these markets: GLP-1 drugs and the debate over who deserves them, cannabis and psychedelics as they move from stigma to shelf, the unregulated wellness and supplement economy, identity-forward branding in contested categories, influencer and crowdfunding marketing, and the backlash that decides where new services and businesses are allowed to exist. Across these settings, she examines how moral judgment, stigma, and inferred motive travel through the marketplace. Her research uses experimental, field, and multi-method designs, often in partnership with firms, nonprofits, and communities operating in these categories.

Her work has appeared in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

She teaches Marketing Research & Analytics in the Kellogg MBA program and received the Sidney J. Levy Teaching Award.


About Chethana
Research interests
  • Social Stigma
  • Morality
  • Health Decision-making
  • Emotions
  • The Saroj & Vithala Rao Young Scholar Award, Cornell University
    Society for Consumer Psychology Dissertation Proposal Award, Winner
    Sidney J. Levy Teaching Award, Kellogg Graduate School of Management
  • Editorial Board, Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2025
    Referee, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2024
    Referee, Journal of Marketing Research, 2023
    Referee, Journal of Consumer Research, 2022
    Referee, Journal of Association of Consumer Research, 2021
    Editorial Board, Marketing Letters, 2021
    Referee, Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2019-2020
    Referee, Motivation and Emotion, 2019-2020
    Referee, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2020

Special Topics in Consumer Research (MKTG-540-0)

This course introduces students to new topics and approaches in consumer behavior research. As such, the topics will change from year to year, and students will be challenged to further develop the theoretical model proposed in the papers. Besides being relevant to marketing students, this course is likely of interest to graduate students in psychology, communication studies and education.