Akshay R. Rao is the General Mills Chair in Marketing and Director of the Institute for Research in Marketing at the Carlson School of Management, where he has twice been the recipient of teaching excellence awards, and was recognized as an Outstanding Faculty member in the fourth and fifth editions of Business Week’s Guide to the Best Business Schools.  Rao's teaching, research, and consulting have focused on industries ranging from food and airlines to apparel and the Internet, and consumer behavior, pricing strategy, channels of distribution, product/brand management, and sales force management.  A winner of the 1987 Robert Ferber Award for interdisciplinary research on Consumer Behavior and the 2000 Maynard award for contribution to Marketing theory, Rao’s research has appeared in various scholarly journals such as the Journal of Business, the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. His applied work has also appeared in the Harvard Business Review, the Journal of Brand Management, Pricing Strategy & Practice: An International Journal, and Sloan Management Review.  He currently serves on the editorial review board of the Journal of Consumer Psychology, as well as on the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Product and Brand Management and previously served on the editorial board of the Journal of Marketing.  His views are regularly solicited by local and national media in print, radio and television, including the Wall Street Journal, "The News Hour" on PBS, and CNN. Currently, Rao is working on several research projects including risky choice, communicating quality to uninformed consumers, the neurological basis for consumer decision-making, and establishing, measuring and sustaining consumer intimacy.  He has testified to the Federal Trade Commission on the topic of Slotting Allowances and was co-chair of the American Marketing Association’s Doctoral Consortium (2003) and the Association for Consumer Research Conference (2004).

• October 24 and 25, 2008.  Served as Session Chair for "Marketing Issues in Politics" and participated in the Roundtable Sessions on "Conducting Consumer Research in Emerging Markets" and "Consumer Neuroscience" at the Association for Consumer Research's 2008 conference.
   
• October 26, 2007 session discussant at the Association for Consumer Research 2007 conference at the Money Makes the World Go 'Round - and Other Interesting Effects on Affect, Consumption, Goal Pursuit, and Generosity session.
   
• July 19, 2007 debate "Policy and a Pint: The Price of Gas," at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis, MN.  Media coverage of the event included MPR, The City Pages and The Minnesota Daily.  Listen here.
   
• June 7-8, 2007 presentation of both the opening and closing remarks to the Creating and Cultivating Brand Connections conference, cohosted by the Marketing Science Institute and the Institute for Research in Marketing in Minneapolis, MN, as well as "Reflections on the Academic Session," and a presentation on his original research, "Understanding the Emotional Bases of Brand Choice."
   
• June 1, 2007 presented to the University of Maryland's Marketing Camp.
   
• May 11, 2007 presentation of "Could Ralph Nader's Exit Have Helped Al Gore? The Impact of Decoy Entry and Exit on Consumer Choice," at the Understanding Consumer Choices session of the Yale Center for Consumer Insights' conference on Collaborative and Multidisciplinary Research.