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Faculty List & Bios

Jill Avery

Assistant Professor

Phone: 617-521-3853
Fax: 617-521-3880
Office: M-336
Email:

Education

DBA, Harvard Business School, MBA; The Wharton School, BA; University of Pennsylvania

Specialization

Brand management, customer relationship management (CRM), social mission brands, branding in social media, brand communities, consumer behavior

Bio

Dr. Jill Avery is an assistant professor of marketing at the Simmons School of Management in Boston, where she has been on the faculty since 2007. She holds a DBA in marketing from the Harvard Business School, a MBA in marketing and finance from the Wharton School, and a BA in English and art history from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Avery's research focuses on brand management and customer relationship management issues. Her doctoral dissertation research on online brand communities won the 2006 Harvard Business School Wyss award for excellence in doctoral research and the best paper award at the Association of Consumer Research conference on gender, marketing, and consumer behavior. Her work has been published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Business Horizons, and the European Business Review. Her branding insights have been frequently cited in the business press including Advertising Age, The Economist, The New York Times, The Financial Times, and Business Week.

Dr. Avery teaches marketing management, brand management, integrated marketing communications, and consumer behavior in the MBA and undergraduate programs at Simmons College. She received the Simmons School of Management's award for teaching excellence for her MBA teaching. She was awarded a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching at Harvard University for her undergraduate teaching. She has written a series of teaching cases on branding and social media which are available from Harvard Business School Publishing. Her case writing includes cases on Porsche, Pepsi, EMC, EILEEN FISHER, HubSpot, and Better World Books.

Prior to her academic career, Dr. Avery spent nine years in brand management, managing brands for The Gillette Company, Braun Inc., Samuel Adams, and AT&T, and spent three years on the agency side of the business, as an account executive managing consumer promotions for Pepsi, General Foods, Bristol-Myers, and Citibank. She remains close to practice by offering marketing consulting services to a range of companies and non-profit organizations, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she serves as the vice chairman of the Board of Overseers.

Current Course(s)

  • Marketing Management
  • Creating Brand Value
  • Consumer Behavior

Publications

Journal Articles

  • Avery, Jill (2012) "Protecting the Markers of Masculinity: Consumer Resistance to Brand Gender-Bending," International Journal of Research in Marketing, forthcoming December 2012.
  • Avery, Jill, Thomas J. Steenburgh, John Deighton, and Mary Caravella (2012) "Adding Bricks to Clicks: Predicting the Patterns of Cross-Channel Elasticities Over Time," Journal of Marketing, forthcoming May 2012.
  • Paharia, Neeru, Anat Keinan, Jill Avery, and Juliet B. Schor (2011) "The Underdog Effect: The Marketing of Disadvantage and Determination through Brand Biography," Journal of Consumer Research, 37 (5), February 2011, pp. 775-790.
  • Fournier, Susan and Jill Avery (2011) "Putting the ‘Relationship' Back into CRM," MIT Sloan Management Review, 52 (3), Spring 2011, pp. 63-72.
  • Fournier, Susan and Jill Avery (2011) "The Uninvited Brand," Business Horizons, 54 (3), May/June 2011, pp. 193-207.
  • Keinan, Anat, Jill Avery and Neeru Paharia (2010) "Capitalizing on the Underdog Effect," Harvard Business Review, 88 (11), November 2010, p. 32.
  • Heckler, Susan E., Kevin Lane Keller, Michael J. Houston, and Jill Avery (forthcoming) "Building Brand Knowledge Structures: Elaboration and Interference Effects on the Processing of Sequentially Advertised Brand Benefit Claims," Journal of Marketing Communications.

Book Chapters

  • Steenburgh, Thomas and Jill Avery (forthcoming) "EMC: Delivering Customer Centricity," Business Marketing Management B2B, eds. Michael Hutt and Thomas Speh, Cengage.
  • Avery, Jill and Susan Fournier (forthcoming) "Firing Your Best Customers," Consumer-Brand Relationships: Theories and Applications, eds. Marc Fetscherin, Susan Fournier, Michael Breazeale, and T.C. Melewar, Routledge.
  • Fournier, Susan and Jill Avery (forthcoming) "Managing Brands by Managing Brand Relationships," Perspectives on Brand Management, ed. Mark Uncles, Palgrave-McMillan.
  • Avery, Jill (2011) "The Relational Roles of Brands," Marketing Management: A Cultural Perspective, eds. Lisa Penaloza, Nil Toulouse, and Luca Visconti, Routledge.
  • Avery, Jill, Neeru Paharia, Anat Keinan and Juliet B. Schor (2010) "The Strategic Use of Brand Biographies," Research in Consumer Behavior, Volume 10, ed. Russell W. Belk, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp. 213-229.
  • Avery, Jill (2010) "Gender Bender Brand Hijacks and Consumer Revolt: The Porsche Cayenne Story," Consumer Behavior: Human Pursuit of Happiness in a World of Goods, ed. Banwari Mittal, Open Mentis, pp. 645-649.
  • Avery, Jill (2008) "Marketing in the Age of Web 2.0," Simmons Magazine, 90 (3).

Teaching Cases

Research

  • Brand Management
  • Brand Meaning and Consumer Identity Construction
  • Consumer-Brand Relationships and CRM
  • Branding in Web 2.0 and Social Media

Dissertation 
"Saving Face by Making Meaning: The Negative Effects of Consumers' Self-Serving Response to Brand Extension," Harvard Business School Doctoral Dissertation, UMI Dissertation Publishing.

Awards & Accolades

  • School of Management MBA Award for Teaching Excellence, Simmons College (2011)
  • Best Paper Award, ACR Conference on Gender, Marketing, and Consumer Behavior (2008)
  • Harvard Business School Wyss Award for Excellence in Doctoral Research (2006)
  • AMA Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium Fellow, University of Maryland (2006)
  • Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize Nominee, Harvard University (2004)
  • Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Harvard University (2003)
  • Bachelor of Arts cum laude honors, University of Pennsylvania (1988)

Working Papers

  • Framing the Game: How Positioning Brands in Competition Motivates Politicized Consumption, with Neeru Paharia and Anat Keinan.
  • Saving Face by Making Meaning: The Negative Effects of Brand Communities Self-Serving Response to Brand Extensions, (invited resubmission) at the Journal of Consumer Research.

Professional Memberships

  • American Marketing Association
  • Association for Consumer Research
  • Marketing Science Institute

Speaking Engagements

  • Contracting for Relationships, 2012 Consumer Brand Relationships Conference, Simmons College
  • Game On: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, 2012 Simmons Leadership Conference, Simmons College, with Jane McGonigal
  • Framing the Game: How Consumers' Relationships with Brands depend upon Brands' Relationships with their Competitors, 2011 International Colloquium on Consumer-Brand Relationships, Rollins College 
  • Putting the ‘R' Back into CRM, 2010 Consumer Culture Theory Conference, University of Wisconsin 
  • The Underdog Effect: The Marketing of Disadvantage through Brand Biography, 2009 Association for Consumer Research North American Conference, Pittsburgh 
  • The Underdog Effect: The Marketing of Disadvantage through Brand Biography, 2009 Consumer Culture Theory Conference, University of Michigan
  • The Evolution of Hierarchical Status Systems and Hegemonic Interpretation of Brand Meaning in Brand Communities, 2008 Consumer Culture Theory Conference, Suffolk University
  • Protecting the Markers of Hegemonic Masculinity: Consumer Resistance to Gender-Bending Brand Extensions, 2008 Association for Consumer Research Conference on Gender, Marketing, and Consumer Behavior, Simmons College
  • You Can't Change My Brand: How Communities Renegotiate Brand Meaning, 2007 Engaging Communities for the Company and the Brand, Marketing Science Institute Conference, Boston University
  • Saving Face: Consumers' Collective Negotiation of Brand Meaning Change, 2006 Consumer Culture Theory Conference, Notre Dame University
  • Adding Bricks to Clicks, 2006 INFORMS Marketing Science Conference, Pittsburgh
  • Adding Bricks to Clicks, 2006 Advertising and Consumer Psychology Conference, Houston
  • Contracting for Loyalty: CRM from the Consumer's Perspective, 2005 Customer Advocacy Symposium, Bentley College with Susan Fournier and Andrea Wojnicki.
  • Contracting for Relationships: A Developmental View, 2004 American Marketing Association Summer Educators Conference, Boston
  • Contracting for Relationships: A Developmental View, 2004 Association for Consumer Research Annual Conference, Portland