The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Marketing,
#1
E. Jerome McCarthy
#2037
Overall Influence
1928 - 2015 (87 years)
Edmund Jerome McCarthy was an American marketing professor and author. He proposed the concept of the 4 Ps marketing mix in his 1960 book Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach, which has been one of the top textbooks in university marketing courses since its publication. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Marketing, McCarthy was a "pivotal figure in the development of marketing thinking". He was also a founder, advisory board member, and consultant for Planned Innovation Institute, which was established to bolster Michigan industry. In 1987, McCarthy received the American Marketing Associ...
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Kevin Lane Keller
#9735
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Kevin Lane Keller is the E. B. Osborn Professor of Marketing at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He is most notable for having authored Strategic Brand Management , a widely used text on brand management. The book is focused on the "how to" and "why" of brand management, this strategy guide provides specific tactical guidelines for planning, building, measuring, and managing brand equity. He has published his research in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Journal of Consumer Research. In addition, Philip Kotler selected Keller to be his co-author on...
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Philip Kotler
#27320
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (94 years)
Philip Kotler is an American marketing author, consultant, and professor emeritus; the S. C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University . He is known for popularizing the definition of marketing mix. He is the author of over 80 books, including Marketing Management, Principles of Marketing, Kotler on Marketing, Marketing Insights from A to Z, Marketing 4.0, Marketing Places, Marketing of Nations, Chaotics, Market Your Way to Growth, Winning Global Markets, Strategic Marketing for Health Care Organizations, S...
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Jagdish Sheth
#5664
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
Jagdish N. Sheth is the Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing at the Goizueta Business School of Emory University. He was a prominent member of the core team during the initial years of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, the first Indian Institute of Management. Prof. Sheth was awarded by Padma Bhushan 2020 for his work in literature & education in United States.
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A. Parasuraman
#10952
Overall Influence
A. "Parsu" Parasuraman is an Indian-American marketing professor and author. He is the Professor and the James W. McLamore Chair in Marketing at the University of Miami. Education Parasuraman got his bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Madras and MBA in Marketing from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad in 1970 and 1972 respectively. He then proceeded to the United States where he gained a doctorate in Business Administration from Indiana University in 1975.
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Don E. Schultz
#9471
Overall Influence
1934 - 2020 (86 years)
Don Edward Schultz was Professor Emeritus of Service at Northwestern University's Medill School. He was most notable for his research and writing on integrated marketing communications . Education and early career Schultz earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from University of Oklahoma in 1957, a master's degree in advertising from Michigan State University in 1975, and a PhD in mass media from Michigan State in 1977. Schultz began his career in publication sales and management. In 1965, he joined the firm of Tracy-Locke Advertising and Public Relations based in Dallas, Texas, where ...
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Frank Bass
#11326
Overall Influence
1926 - 2006 (80 years)
Frank M. Bass was an American academic in the field of marketing research and marketing science. He was the creator of the Bass diffusion model that describes the adoption of new products and technologies by first-time buyers. He died on December 1, 2006.
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George S. Day
#15264
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
George S. Day is an educator and consultant in the fields of marketing, strategy and innovation management. He is the Geoffrey T. Boisi Professor Emeritus at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He founded the Mack Institute for Innovation Management at the Wharton School, where he is presently Faculty Emeritus in Residence.
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Bernd Schmitt
#8252
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Bernd Herbert Schmitt is a professor of international business in the marketing department at Columbia Business School, Columbia University in New York. He is known for his research, books, speaking and consulting on customer experience, customer happiness, branding, innovation and for his work in Asia on Asian markets and consumers. He wrote several influential books in these areas like Experiential Marketing, Customer Experience Management, Big Think Strategy and Happy Customers Everywhere.
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Russell W. Belk
#27201
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Russell W. Belk is an American business academic, currently a Distinguished Research Professor and the Kraft Foods Canada Chair in Marketing at Schulich School of Business, York University. Professor Belk is a leading authority on consumption, consumer culture, consumer behaviour, materialism, collecting, gift-giving, sharing and the digital self. In 2017, he was elected to the Royal Order of Canada, one of the highest honours that can be bestowed on researchers in Canada.
Go to Profile#11
Leonard Berry
#20484
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
#12
Dipak C. Jain
#6089
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Dipak Chand Jain is Co-President and Global Advisor of China Europe International Business School. He previously was the Director of Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. The announcement of his appointment as Director of Sasin was made on 7 June 2014. He stepped down in 2017.
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J. Scott Armstrong
#18783
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
John Scott Armstrong was an author, forecasting and marketing expert, and an Emeritus Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Armstrong's research and writing in forecasting promote the ideas that in order to maximize accuracy, forecasting methods should rely on evidence-based methods.
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Robert Lusch
#14990
Overall Influence
1949 - 2017 (68 years)
Dr. Robert Frank Lusch was an American business professor and Professor of Marketing at the University of Arizona business school. Early life and education Lusch was born in Grosse Point, Michigan, in 1949. As an adolescent Lusch moved with his mother, father, and two sisters to Tucson, Arizona. Lusch often claimed he "grew up in Arizona"; he graduated from Tucson High School and attended the University of Arizona where he received a bachelor's degree and an MBA. In 1975 he received his Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Go to Profile#15
Roger Blackwell
#14564
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
Roger Blackwell is an American marketing expert and public speaker. He was described in The New York Times as one of America's top speakers on business and marketing, along with Daniel Burrus and Tom Peters. He has served on the board of directors for multiple companies, most prominently Max & Erma's Restaurant, Inc., Abercrombie & Fitch, and Worthington Foods. Blackwell was a long-time marketing professor at Ohio State University, and has also taught at Stanford University, Cape Town University in South Africa, and Guelph University in Canada. Prior to his retirement, Sales and Marketing Executives International named him Outstanding Marketing Professor in America.
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Jonah Berger
#16158
Overall Influence
Jonah Berger is a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, an internationally best-selling author, and an expert on change, word of mouth, viral marketing, social influence, and how products, ideas, and behavior catch on. He has published over 50 articles in academic journals, and has written for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review. More than a million copies of his books Contagious: Why Things Catch On, Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior, and The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind are in print in over 35 cou...
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Shelby D. Hunt
#16232
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (86 years)
Shelby D. Hunt was an American organizational theorist, the Jerry S. Rawls and P. W. Horn Professor of Marketing at the Texas Tech University, and a highly cited marketing researcher. He is noted for his contributions to competition theory and the resource-advantage view.
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Byron Sharp
#27104
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Byron Sharp is a Professor of Marketing Science at the University of South Australia, known for his work on loyalty programs. Life and work Born in Auckland, New Zealand, Sharp obtained his Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing in 1988 at the University of Auckland, and his Master of Business by Research at the University of South Australia, and PhD from the University of Adelaide.
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Brian Wansink
#10919
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Brian Wansink is a former American professor and researcher who worked in consumer behavior and marketing research. He is the former executive director of the USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion and held the John S. Dyson Endowed Chair in the Applied Economics and Management Department at Cornell University, where he directed the Cornell Food and Brand Lab.
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David Schmittlein
#21257
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
David C. Schmittlein is an American academic administrator serving as the John C Head III Dean and Professor of Marketing at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He was appointed on August 27, 2007. Prior to joining MIT, Schmittlein was the Ira A. Lipman Professor and Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
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Micael Dahlén
#23153
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (52 years)
Micael Dahlén is a Swedish author, public speaker and Professor of marketing and consumer behavior at the Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden. His award-winning research within marketing, creativity and consumer behavior has been published in four books and numerous journal articles. Dahlén's books have reached a global audience, rights being sold to countries such as the U.S, U.K, Germany, South Korea, Russia and Brazil. In 2013 Dahlén stated in an interview that he was writing a novel.
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Leigh McAlister
#50069
Overall Influence
Leigh McAlister is a professor of business marketing at The University of Texas at Austin and is an Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute. She is known for her work on retailing, consumer behaviour and variety seeking buying behavior.
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Glen L. Urban
#18916
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
Glen L. Urban has been a member of the MIT Sloan School of Management faculty since 1966 and dean at the school from 1993 to 1998. Urban is a leading educator, prize-winning researcher specializing in marketing and new product development, entrepreneur, and author. He is the Chairman of Sloan's MIT Center for Digital Business.
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Marko Sarstedt
#69832
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (46 years)
Marko Sarstedt is a German academic and a marketing researcher. He is a Full Professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Adjunct Research Professor at Babeș-Bolyai-University. Sarstedt is the recipient of five Emerald Citations of Excellence awards and three Emerald Literati Outstanding Paper awards for his papers. He is a member of the Clarivate Analytics’ Highly Cited Researcher List. In 2019, he was listed among the most cited researchers across all scientific disciplines and is ranked by The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as the second most influential business researcher in Germany in the research category.
Go to Profile#25
Shelby D. Hunt
#81399
Overall Influence
#26
Arch G. Woodside
#83485
Overall Influence
#27
Anirban Mukhopadhyay
#83906
Overall Influence
Anirban Mukhopadhyay is a marketing scholar associated with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Consumer Psychology from 2018 to 2020 and Co-Editor in 2016 and 2017. At HKUST, he served as Associate Provost from 2020-22 and Associate Dean of the School of Business and Management from 2015-20.
Go to Profile#28
Richard Bagozzi
#37019
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Richard Bagozzi is an American marketing theorist, consumer psychologist, and the Dwight F. Benton Professor of Behavioral Science in Management at Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. He is one of the most cited scholars in Marketing and among the field's most prominent theorists and empirical researchers. He has been ranked among The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds in 2014 by Thomson Reuters. He is an inaugural fellow of the American Marketing Association.
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Venkatesh Shankar
#37119
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Venkatesh Shankar is an American marketing professor, consultant and author. He is currently Professor of Marketing, Ford Chair in Marketing & E-Commerce at Mays Business School, Texas A&M University. He is the co-editor of the Handbook of Marketing Strategy and the author of Shopper Marketing.
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Michael Czinkota
#33660
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Michael R. Czinkota is an American organizational theorist and Professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. Czinkota is the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the United States Department of Commerce and a former head of U.S. delegation for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Industry Committee in Paris . From 1986-1987, Czinkota was a Senior Advisor for Export Controls in the U.S. Department of Commerce. Czinkota was awarded the Significant Contribution to Global Marketing award from the American Marketing Association in 2007.
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Dawn Iacobucci
#51554
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Dawn Iacobucci is an American quantitative psychologist and marketing researcher, Professor in Marketing at the Owen Graduate School of Management, known for her work in the field of foundations of marketing research.
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Rajdeep Grewal
#30868
Overall Influence
Rajdeep 'Raj' Grewal is the Townsend Family Distinguished Professor of Marketing at Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the editor-in-chief of Journal of Marketing Research. He is known for his work on marketing research, marketing strategy and business to business marketing.
Go to Profile#33
Christian Grönroos
#90554
Overall Influence
#34
Itamar Simonson
#37850
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Itamar Simonson is a professor of marketing, holding the Sebastian S. Kresge Chair of Marketing in the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He is known for his work on the factors that determine the choices that buyers make. His academic career started at the University of California at Berkeley, where he taught for six years, before he moved to Stanford. Many of his former PhD students hold senior positions at some of the best universities in the world.
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Frank Magid
#24815
Overall Influence
1931 - 2010 (79 years)
Frank Magid was an American marketing consultant, widely known for introducing the "Action News" format of evening local TV news, and was an original developer of Good Morning America. Time magazine named Magid "the nation's leading television news doctor" in 1977, and he became the namesake of the term "Magidized".
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Peter Fader
#50806
Overall Influence
Peter S. Fader is the Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His research is about the analysis of behavioral data to forecast customer shopping/purchasing activities.
Go to Profile#37
Neeli Bendapudi
#8609
Overall Influence
Neeli Bendapudi is an American academic administrator who is the 19th president of Pennsylvania State University. From 2018 until 2021, she served as the 18th president of the University of Louisville. In December 2021, Penn State announced Bendapudi as the university's president; she succeeded Eric J. Barron following his retirement. She assumed office in May 2022 and is the first woman and the first non-white person to serve as Penn State's president.
Go to Profile#38
Syed Saad Andaleeb
#37778
Overall Influence
Syed Saad Andaleeb is a Bangladeshi-American academic who served as the 3rd Vice-chancellor of BRAC University. Education and career Andaleeb obtained his bachelor's in chemical engineering in 1976 and master's in business administration in 1977 from University of New Hampshire. He then earned his Ph.D. in business administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989.
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Eitan Muller
#46747
Overall Influence
Eitan Muller is an Israeli professor of marketing at Stern School of Business at New York University and Arison School of Business at Reichman University. Muller's research focuses on diffusion of innovation, new products and tech, and monetization and pricing.
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John Quelch
#10800
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
John Anthony Quelch CBE is a British-American academic and professor. He is the former dean of the University of Miami School of Business at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida from 2017 to 2022.
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Gilbert A. Churchill
#98229
Overall Influence
#42
Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
#45973
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Nicholas Jackson O'Shaughnessy is a British academic. He is professor of communications and of post-Cold War German history at Queen Mary, University of London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, a Quondam Fellow of Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge and has previously been a professor at Keele University and Brunel University. He is considered an expert on political propaganda, particularly Nazi propaganda.
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Rajendra Srivastava
#38881
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Rajendra K. Srivastava is Novartis Professor of Marketing Strategy and Innovation at the Indian School of Business. He has been a tenured professor and an academic administrator and has worked in the United States, Singapore, and India. He has been listed in the Forbes's Tycoons of Tomorrow 2018. He is also a member of the board of directors of Happiest Minds, a publicly listed company in India.
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Michael Ahearne
#53885
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Michael Ahearne is Professor and C.T. Bauer Chair in Marketing at the C.T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston. He is also the Research Director of the Sales Excellence Institute. He is an associate editor at several journals, including Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Journal of Service Research. He was the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management.
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Roger James Calantone
#102112
Overall Influence
#46
Adrian Sargeant
#58623
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Adrian Sargeant is a British academic who is co-founder and co-director of the Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy. He is an adjunct professor of Philanthropy at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University where he was the first Visiting Robert F. Hartsook Chair in Fundraising. Sargeant is also an Adjunct Professor of Fundraising at the Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
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Thomas S. Robertson
#57190
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Thomas S. Robertson is a Scottish-born American academic. He is the Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was also the dean from 2007 to 2014. Early life Thomas S. Robertson was born in Scotland. He graduated from the Wayne State University, earned a master of arts degree in sociology and a PhD from its Kellogg School of Management.
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Noel Capon
#42261
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
Noel Capon is an American organizational theorist, and the R.C. Kopf Professor of International Marketing at Columbia Business School. Biography Capon received his BSc and PhD in Chemistry from the University College London his PhD from Manchester Business School, his MBA from Harvard University and another PhD from Columbia University in 1975 with a thesis entitled "Experimental evaluation of alternative message variables in personal selling and direct mail advertising".
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Ravi Dhar
#80596
Overall Influence
Ravi Dhar is an American behavioral scientist, an expert in consumer behavior and branding, currently the George Rogers Clark Professor of Management and Marketing at Yale School of Management. He is also the director of the Center for Customer Insights at the Yale School of Management. He also has an affiliated appointment as professor of psychology in the Department of Psychology, Yale University.
Go to Profile#50
Stephen Louis Vargo
#106245
Overall Influence
