Aritra Bhattacharya

Aritra Bhattacharya

Overview

I am a PhD candidate in marketing at the Indian School of Business, expecting to graduate in 2026. I am on the 2025-26 academic job market. My research program spans two interconnected streams: sales force management and brand management. Drawing on my background in mathematics, my research blends methodological rigor with managerial relevance, using field experiments and causal econometric techniques to address critical business challenges.

My job market paper and the first essay of my dissertation, “Incentive Design for Sales Managers: Impact on Performance and Resource Allocation” has received a Revise and Resubmit at the Journal of Marketing. This work has been recognized as a winner of the ISBM Doctoral Support Award and the NASMEI Research Grant, and the runner-up for the AMA Sales SIG/USCA Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Award. My second essay focuses on the optimal design of sales contests for new product launches. In my third essay, I examine the impact of sales backgrounds of brand managers on their marketing-mix decisions. My research pipeline extends beyond my dissertation. This includes “Beyond Negotiations: How to Align Price Delegation With Sales Incentives,” which is under review at the Journal of Marketing, and a planned field experiment to study the optimal locus of deployment of AI-based coaching: salespeople or sales managers.

My teaching philosophy emphasizes student engagement and practical application through a mix of case studies, hands-on exercises, and experiential learning. I developed and taught Marketing Analytics for second-year MBA students and Marketing Management for first-year BBA students at one of ISB’s partner institutions, with evaluation scores of 4.97/5 and 4.27/5, respectively. To make these courses application-focused, I authored seven case studies using LLMs and organized a study trek to a major retail hub. I also taught DBA workshops on Computer-Based Data Analysis and a PhD Mathematics Boot Camp at ISB, with all the evaluations above 6/7. I have honed my approach by participating in in-person pedagogical workshops organized by Harvard Business School and the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.

I serve as an ad-hoc reviewer for the International Journal of Research in Marketing and review for conferences such as the Summer AMA. I have prepared for these roles by participating in reviewer workshops at the Winter AMA and the AMA-Sheth Doctoral Consortium.

Education

• BS – MS, Mathematics, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali, 2021
• GRE Score: 335/340 (166 Verbal, 169 Quantitative) in Jul 2021

Research Interests

• Substantive: Sales Force Management, Mid-Level Management, Marketing Strategy
• Methods: Field Experiments, Econometric Models, Causal Inference, Secondary Data

Honors

• AMA-Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium Fellow 2025, The Ohio State University
• ISBM Business Marketing Doctoral Fellow 2024 and Winner, ISBM Doctoral Support Award Competition 2024 (US$5,000)
• Runner-up, AMA Sales SIG/USCA Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Award 2025 (US$1,000)
• Winner, NASMEI Research Grant 2024 (INR1,00,000 ≈ US$1,200)
• Winner, USCA PhD Research Travel Grant 2025 (US$1,000)
• Baylor Fellow, AMA New Horizons Sales Faculty Consortium 2024
• Finalist, Deakin University Visualise Your Thesis Competition 2024
• ISB Fellow: 2021 – Present
• NIUS Physics Fellow (Batch XII), Govt. of India: 2014
• DST-INSPIRE Fellow, Govt. of India: 2014 – 2019