Aaker, David A(llen) 1938-

views updated

AAKER, David A(llen) 1938-

PERSONAL: Born February 11, 1938, in Fargo, ND; married; children: two. Education: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, B.S., 1960; Stanford University, M.S., 1967, Ph.D., 1969.

ADDRESSES: Office—Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720; Prophet Brand Strategy, 625 Third St., San Francisco, CA 94107. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Texas Instruments, Inc., Houston, TX, cost engineer, 1960-61, sales engineer, 1961-63, product sales manager, 1963-65; Stanford University, Stanford, CA, instructor in statistics, 1967; University of California, Berkeley, acting assistant professor, 1968-69, assistant professor, 1969-72, associate professor, 1972-76, professor of marketing statistics, 1976-81, J. Gary Shansby Professor of Marketing Strategy, 1981-94, E. T. Grether Professor of Marketing, 1994—, professor emeritus, 2000—; Prophet Brand Strategy, San Francisco, CA, vice chairman, 1999—; Brand Leadership Co., New York, NY, partner.

MEMBER: American Marketing Association, American Statistical Association, Institute of Management Sciences, Tau Beta Pi.

AWARDS, HONORS: Special merit award, Thompson Gold Medal Competition, 1972; Journal of Marketing award, 1985.

WRITINGS:

(Editor and contributor) Multivariate Analysis in Marketing: Theory and Application, Wadsworth (Belmont, CA), 1971, 2nd edition, 1979.

(Editor, with George S. Day) Consumerism: Search for the Consumer Interest, Free Press (New York, NY), 1971, 4th edition, 1982.

(With John G. Meyers) Advertising Management: An Analytical Approach, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1975, 5th edition, 1996.

(With George S. Day) Marketing Research: Private and Public Sector Decisions, Wiley (New York, NY), 1980, 8th edition, with V. Kumar, 2003.

Developing Business Strategies, J. Wiley (New York, NY), 1984, 6th edition, 2001.

Strategic Market Management, J. Wiley (New York, NY), 1984, 6th edition, 2001.

(With Kevin Lane Keller) Consumer Evaluations of Brand Extensions, Marketing Science Institute (Cambridge, MA), 1990.

Managing Brand Equity: Capitalizing on the Value of a Brand Name, Maxwell Macmillan International (New York, NY), 1991.

(With Rajeev Batra and John G. Myers) Advertising Management, Prentice Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1992.

Building Strong Brands, Free Press (New York, NY), 1996.

(With V. Kumar and George S. Day) Essentials of Marketing Research, J. Wiley (New York, NY), 1999, 2nd edition, 2002.

(With Erich Joachimsthaler) Brand Leadership, Free Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Brand Portfolio Strategy: Creating Relevance, Differentiation, Energy, Leverage, and Clarity, Free Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor of articles and reviews to business journals, including Planning Review, Management Science, Harvard Business Review, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Marketing Research, and Journal of Marketing. Member of editorial board of Journal of Marketing Research, 1969—, and Journal of Business Research, 1973—; associate editor of Management Science, 1971—.

SIDELIGHTS: David A. Aaker "has established a sound reputation for his many contributions to the important topic of marketing strategy," as Peter M. Chisnall noted in the Journal of the Market Research Society. Aacker is also "one of the most familiar names in brand strategy in large part thanks to the success of his best-selling Managing Brand Equity (1991) and Building Strong Brands (1996)," according to a writer for Brandweek. The 2000 publication of Brand Leadership, according to Arthur J. Kover in the Journal of Advertising Research, "completes a trilogy by David Aaker. It is the capstone of his by-now-famous work on brands, branding, and brand equity."

Aaker's view of brands recognizes their importance as a strategic corporate asset. But he argues that corporations should consciously manage their brand identities to encompass areas beyond simple product recognition. Just as a brand like the Harley-Davidson motorcycle, for example, has developed an identity as a symbol of freedom and adventure, other brands can likewise develop themselves in ways that go beyond their actual product to suggest lifestyle choices that emotionally appeal to wider audiences. This development of strong brand names can make for continuing long-term growth of a business.

Aaker's Building Strong Brands is grounded in real-life experience, presenting case histories of the creation and development of actual brands such as Saturn automobiles, Kodak, and McDonald's. Barbara Jacobs in Booklist, for example, found that the book "presents case examples to which anyone can relate." Speaking of the same volume, Daniel P. Chamberlin in the Journal of Consumer Marketing noted that "here in classical textbook format the author takes us through the steps of creating a brand identity…. And every one of his steps is beautifully illustrated by one or more brand histories selected for their pertinence to the particular topic Aaker is addressing at the moment." Similarly, Scott Ferris in Multichannel News found that "Aaker does a superb job in laying out contextual cases throughout each chapter."

Aaker's Brand Leadership contains advice based on his own studies of some 300 organizations. "The book is studded with marketing insights," according to Kover, who also found it to be "a good read and … full of ideas to spark the minds of brand managers." Paul Woolf, writing in Marketing, found that "it is his broad range of examples … coupled with an uncanny ability to make theory tangible, that makes this book an important addition to any serious marketer's arsenal."