The customer isn't always right, but some customers are better than others

When he isn’t teaching Wharton undergrads how to outsmart the market, Dr. Peter Fader is busting all the myths about marketing -- an industry that is currently worth $1.2 trillion annually. He argues that the customer isn’t always right, and his research regarding customer centricity has revolutionized the way that marketers identify the customers that are worth marketing to. But his research extends far beyond the realms of marketing. He believes that a company is only as good as its customers, and that they are the key to properly value a corporation. In fact, a class implementing his customer-based corporate valuation principles beat the Wall Street analysts by a landslide. In 2018, he sold his predictive analytics firm to sportswear giant Nike, and now works as the Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of two books around his research in customer centricity, and was the only academic featured on Advertising Age’s “25 Marketing Technology Trailblazers.”