Jan Benedict Steenkamp

Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp researches global marketing; the effectiveness of such marketing strategies as branding, private labels and new products; interorganizational relationships; and marketing research techniques. He teaches in these areas and in innovation and strategy.

He is the author of the new book, Private Label Strategy: How to Meet the Store Brand Challenge, written with Nirmalya Kumar of London Business School (Harvard Business School Press, 2007).

Dr. Steenkamp is the C. Knox Massey Distinguished Professor of Marketing and marketing area chair at UNC Kenan-Flagler. He also is executive director of AiMark, a global center studying key marketing strategy issues, which brings together academics around the world, two of the top-four market research agencies, and brand manufacturers.

He has consulted with numerous companies, including Procter & Gamble, Kraft, Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser, Zurich Financial Services, KPMG, Sara Lee and Johnson & Johnson.

Before joining UNC Kenan-Flagler, he taught at universities in Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain, South Africa and the United States.

An award-winning researcher, he has written or edited five books, and over 100 scholarly publications. He serves on the editorial boards of all top marketing journals and is past editor of the International Journal of Research in Marketing. The Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences awarded him the Muller lifetime prize for "exceptional achievements in the area of the behavioral and social sciences." It was the first time the prize was awarded to a researcher in any area of business administration.

He received his PhD, master's and bachelor's degrees, all summa cum laude, from Wageningen University in the Netherlands.