About the Author | Madhu Viswanathan is an Associate Professor of Marketing in the Department of Business Administration within the College of Business at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, where he has been on the faculty since 1990. He holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration (Marketing) from the University of Minnesota, and a Bachelor of Technology in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He teaches a course on measurement and research methods to Ph.D.. students and marketing research to undergraduate and MBA students. He has been listed several times as an excellent instructor at the University of Illinois. His research has appeared in journals, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Journal of Consumer Psychology, the Journal of Marketing Research, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and Computer, Speech, and Language. His research is in two areas: measurement and research methodology and low-literate buyer and seller behavior. His work on literacy has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, and the Illinois Center for International Business Education and Research. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Consumer Psychology, the Journal of Consumer Research, and Psychology and Marketing. He has served as the Secretary-Treasurer for the Society for Consumer Psychology and as the Chair of the Consumer Behavior Special Interest Group of the American Marketing Association. He also chaired national conferences for the American Marketing Association and the Society for Consumer Psychology. He directs the Marketplace Literacy Project (www.marketplaceliteracy.org), a nonprofit organization which aims to disseminate knowledge about low-literate buyer and seller behavior. Its activities include the development and distribution of educational materials for adult education, nutrition, and other programs targeted at low-literate consumers in the US, and development and provision of business and consumer literacy training for low-literate, low-income adults in India and other similar contexts. He lives in Champaign, Illinois, with his wife and 10-year old son. |