Jagdish N. Sheth | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1938, Burma (now Myanmar) |
| Occupations | Marketing: consumer behavior, relationship marketing, competitive strategy |
| Known for | The Theory of Buyer Behavior (with John A. Howard) |
| Spouse | Madhuri Sheth (m. 1962) |
| Awards | Padma Bhushan (2020)
AMA-Irwin-McGraw-Hill Distinguished Marketing Educator Award (2004) Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Research Award (2004) |
| Academic background | |
| Education | University of Pittsburgh (MBA 1962, PhD 1966) University of Madras (B.Com.) |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | Emory University (1991–2026)
University of Southern California University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Columbia University Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Jagdish N. Sheth (born 1938) is a marketing scholar who was the Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Business at the Goizueta Business School of Emory University, where he taught from 1991 until his retirement in 2026. He was among the faculty who formed the nucleus of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, the first Indian Institute of Management, during its initial years. Sheth was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2020 for his work in literature and education in the United States. He was chairman of the Jagdish Sheth School of Management, a business school in India that was renamed in his honor in 2020, becoming Chairman Emeritus in 2026.
Sheth was born in Burma (now Myanmar)In 1938, to a Jain family. His family left Burma during the Second World War, following the Japanese invasion, and resettled in India. He completed his schooling in Madras (now Chennai) and received a bachelor's degree in commerce from the University of Madras. As a teenager, he founded a local literacy society, where he met Madhuri Shah, whom he later married. The couple married in 1962.
Sheth moved to the United States in the early 1960s. He received an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh in 1962 and a PhD there in 1966 from its Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business.
Academic positions
Before joining Emory in 1991, Sheth held academic positions at the University of Southern California, the University of Illinois, Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among other institutions. At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he taught in the College of Business from 1969 to 1983, he held a distinguished professorship in marketing. In 2025, Emory's Goizueta Business School established an endowed professorship in marketing named for Sheth.
Institutions and organizations
In 1985, Sheth founded the Center for Telecommunications Management (CTM) at the University of Southern California. The center was renamed the Institute for Communication Technology Management in 2008.
In 2005, Sheth co-founded the India, China & America Institute (ICA Institute), a non-profit organization that provides a platform for research and discussion on economic, social and policy cooperation among the three countries. He serves as its chairman. In 2009, Sheth co-founded the Academy of Indian Marketing (AIM), a not-for-profit consortium of Indian management institutions that supports research in marketing; he is its chairman. Sheth was among the academic associates of the Mumbai Business School, a private business school in Mumbai that closed after three years of operation.
Jagdish Sheth School of Management
In October 2020, IFIM Business School in Bangalore was renamed the Jagdish Sheth School of Management (JAGSoM) in his honor. The school's then chairman, Sanjay Padode, asked Sheth to accept the renaming and gave up his position as chairman of the governing body so that Sheth could take the role. The school operates campuses in Bangalore and Greater Mumbai. In 2026, JAGSoM named Sheth Chairman Emeritus and appointed Sudhir Sethi as chairman of its advisory council.
Sheth's research and writing have covered consumer behavior, relationship marketing, competitive strategy and geopolitical analysis. In 1969, he and John A. Howard published The Theory of Buyer Behavior. Sheth published an article entitled "A Model of Industrial Buyer Behavior" in 1973, which drew from a large volume of empirical study of buyer behavior and emphasized how the "psychological world of the decision-makers" impacted the processes and outcomes of purchasing decision-making. In a November 2020 article, Emory's Goizueta Business School credited Sheth with more than 350 research papers and books, and a June 2025 report in The American Bazaar on the endowed professorship in his name cited more than 350 research papers and 30 books.
A 2021 bibliometric analysis of Sheth's publication record, published in the Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science, ranked his research impact by citation count. As of January 2019, his cumulative Google Scholar citations exceeded 44,000, with an h-index above 80. At the high end, at least two of his publications had individually been cited more than 6,000 times, and at least ten had been cited more than 1,000 times each. The analysis found that relationship marketing, rather than buyer behavior, was his most-cited research topic overall, spanning at least 20 distinct subject areas from consumer behavior and consumption values to emerging markets and sustainability. These figures reflect his citation record as of January 2019 and have not been independently updated to a more recent date.
More recently published work, including his 2024 book on Indian political leadership, has not yet accumulated comparable citation counts, reflecting its shorter time in circulation.
His books include Tectonic Shift: The Geoeconomic Realignment of Globalizing Markets (2006), written with Rajendra S. Sisodia;The Rule of Three: Surviving and Thriving in Competitive Markets (2002), also with Sisodia; and Clients for Life: How Great Professionals Develop Breakthrough Relationships (2000), written with Andrew Sobel. With Atul Parvatiyar, he co-edited the Handbook of Relationship Marketing (2000).In 2007, he published The Self-Destructive Habits of Good Companies…And How to Break Them, and in 2008 Chindia Rising: How China and India Will Benefit Your Business.His autobiography, The Accidental Scholar, written with John Yow, was published in 2014. In 2024, he and Gyanendra Singh published India's Road to Transformation: Why Leadership Matters, a book on the role of political leadership in India's development since independence.
Fellowships
Sheth was named a fellow of the Association for Consumer Research in 2017. He was among the inaugural group of fellows named by the American Marketing Association (AMA) in 2015, and was inducted as a fellow of the Academy of International Business in 2021. The Academy of Marketing Science named him a Distinguished Fellow in 1996. He is also a fellow of the American Psychological Association, and a Distinguished Fellow of the International Engineering Consortium.
American Marketing Association awards
Awards from the AMA and the AMA Foundation include the Paul D. Converse Award in 1992, which recognizes contributions to the theory of marketing; the Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Research Award in 2004; the AMA-Irwin-McGraw-Hill Distinguished Marketing Educator Award in 2004; and the William L. Wilkie "Marketing for a Better World" Award in 2014.
Honorary doctorates
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign awarded Sheth an honorary Doctor of Science degree in 2016, and Shiv Nadar University in India conferred an honorary doctorate of philosophy on him in 2017.
MilliPub Club
In 2020, Sheth was inducted into Emory University's MilliPub Club, established in 2009, which recognizes current Emory faculty who have published at least one paper cited more than 1,000 times. The Goizueta Business School's announcement referred to his 1991 article "Why We Buy What We Buy: A Theory of Consumption Values" in the Journal of Business Research in connection with the recognition.
Sheth and his wife, Madhuri, have established three family foundations. The Madhuri and Jagdish Sheth Foundation (also called the Sheth Foundation) was founded in 1991 to support the development of marketing scholarship; its activities include funding academic awards, doctoral consortia and other scholarly programs. The Sheth Family Foundation, established in 2008, supports education, wellness and sustainability efforts in the United States and India.A third organization, the Sheth Education Foundation, was established around 2019 to support similar philanthropic and educational aims; a 2026 Emory profile lists all three foundations together.
Sheth International Awards for Alumni and Faculty
The Sheth family endows paired international-achievement awards recognizing a distinguished faculty member and alumnus or alumna at several universities. At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, these are the Sheth Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement and the Madhuri and Jagdish N. Sheth International Alumni Award for Exceptional Achievement. At the University of Pittsburgh, the Sheth International Awards, administered by the University Center for International Studies, similarly recognize a faculty member and a young alumnus or alumna. Georgia State University's Sheth Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement and Sheth International Alumni Award for Exceptional Achievement were established in 2018. Kennesaw State University has a parallel Madhuri and Jagdish N. Sheth Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement and a Sheth Distinguished Alumni Award for Exceptional Humanitarian and Service Achievement. At Emory University, the Sheth Distinguished Alumni Award, established in 2002 by a gift from Jagdish and Madhu Sheth, recognizes Emory alumni who have distinguished themselves in service to universities, governments, private-sector firms, or non-governmental organizations; Emory's parallel faculty-recognition prize for international engagement, the Marion V. Creekmore Award, is not a Sheth-named award.
The Madhuri and Jagdish Sheth Foundation helps finance the AMA–Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium, an annual program for marketing doctoral students that is organized by the AMA and hosted by different universities. The consortium, first held in 1966, took its current name in 1997 in recognition of the foundation's commitment to finance part of the event through an AMA Foundation endowed fund. The Sheth Foundation also established the Sheth Foundation/Journal of Marketing Award in 2001 under the AMA Foundation, and, together with the Academy of International Business, funds an annual award for doctoral dissertation proposals.
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