5 actions to elevate customer experience in physical retail
Physical retailers should combine data-driven insights with human touch to create a seamless hybrid shopping experience, these B2B experts say.
Faculty
Sharmila C. Chatterjee is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing and is the Academic Head for the MBA Track in Enterprise Management (EM) launched at MIT Sloan in Fall 2012. Chatterjee teaches the graduate course in B2B Marketing and is deeply engaged in Action Learning as a faculty mentor for G-Lab, China/India Lab, and as an instructor for the Enterprise Management (EM) Lab.
A business-to-business marketing expert, Chatterjee examines issues in the domains of channels of distribution, sales force management, and relationship marketing using survey research coupled with econometric methods for analysis. In the area of sales force management, she carried out some of the first studies in the critical area of sales-marketing interface, specifically, sales lead management. She is interested in effective management of the sales/marketing interface with a view towards appropriate allocation of resources between customer acquisition and retention activities. Lately, Chatterjee has become interested in the diffusion of technological innovations among users at client organizations under the rubric of value based management. In B2C, Chatterjee has done research in the areas of brand trust, financial literacy and multicultural marketing.
Chatterjee has published in Behaviormetrika, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Brand Strategy, Journal of Cultural Marketing Strategy, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Retailing, Marketing Letters, Marketing Management Journal, and Marketing Report. She is an award winning case writer with several of her cases placing first in the case writing competitions sponsored by the educational wing of Direct Marketing Association, DMEF.
Chatterjee graduated from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani and worked briefly in Faridabad, India before earning her PhD in marketing from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Featured Publication
"B2B Relationship Calculus: Quantifying Resource Effects in Service-Dominant Logic."deLeon, Anthony J., and Sharmila C. Chatterjee. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science Vol. 45, No. 3 (2017): 402-427.
Featured Publication
"The Sales Lead Black Hole: On Sales Reps' Follow-Up of Marketing Leads."Sabnis, Gaurav, Sharmila C. Chatterjee, Rajdeep Grewal and Gary L. Lilien. Journal of Marketing Vol. 77, No. 1 (2013): 52-67.
Latinovic, Zoran and Sharmila C. Chatterjee. Journal of Business Research Vol. 175, (2024): 114518.
Chatterjee, Sharmila C. The Faculty Lounge Newsletter, May 9, 2023.
Latinovic, Zoran and Sharmila C. Chatterjee. Journal of Business Research Vol. 144, (2022): 966-974.
Latinovic, Zoran and Sharmila C. Chatterjee. Psychology Today, March 4, 2021.
Physical retailers should combine data-driven insights with human touch to create a seamless hybrid shopping experience, these B2B experts say.
Atlanta, Georgia-based EnviroSpark Energy Solutions designs, installs, and operates EV charging solutions, typically at multi-family housing and corporate office centers. As the growing startup continued expanding its national footprint, they enlisted MIT Sloan Enterprise Management Lab (EM-Lab) students Annie Zhang, MBA ’25, Connor Fox, MBA ’25, and Sarah Schmid, MBA ’25 for recommendations of which markets to target first.
Malls and mall-adjacent places have had to adapt as the value proposition of shops selling the same things that can be bought online diminished.
When it comes to integrating generative AI, "retailers are getting better but are nowhere close to where they want to be."
“...artificial intelligence (AI) has played an important role in helping...battle the health crisis, but technology can only do so much.”
"Many employees assume that when the crisis is over, these 'wartime working conditions' will end and things will go back to the way they were. "