Rajdeep Grewal
Rajdeep Grewal, The Townsend Family Distinguished Professor and Professor of Marketing
Charlotte MBA| Evening MBA| Weekend MBA
What courses do you currently teach, and what do you love most about them?
I currently teach a course titled Customer Value Strategies, which explores how firms can create, deliver, and capture value from their most important asset—the customer. What I love most about teaching this course is helping students shift their perspective from short-term transactions to long-term customer relationships. It’s rewarding to see them learn how to quantify customer lifetime value, think critically about segmentation and targeting, and design strategies that align with both customer needs and firm profitability. The course encourages a rigorous, data-driven approach while also engaging with real-world challenges, making the learning experience both intellectually rich and practically relevant.
How do you bring real-world business challenges or trends into the classroom?
In Customer Value Strategies, I regularly integrate real-world business challenges by using current events as case illustrations and anchoring discussions in ongoing market dynamics. Whether it’s analyzing how streaming platforms adjust pricing based on customer churn data or how retailers reallocate marketing spend toward high-LTV segments, we ground theoretical concepts in what’s happening now. I also design the final exam around recent business developments, requiring students to apply course frameworks to interpret and evaluate real-time strategic decisions. This approach keeps the material fresh, encourages active engagement, and prepares students to think critically in fast-changing business environments.
What’s one lesson or insight you hope every MBA student takes with them after your course?
One key insight I hope every MBA student takes from Customer Value Strategies is that delivering customer value is not a marketing tactic; it is a strategic, cross-functional imperative. Creating and sustaining customer value requires coordinated efforts across the organization, from product design and pricing to operations, analytics, and service. Students come to see that customers are served not through one-size-fits-all solutions but through diverse strategic logics such as sales-led, product-led, marketing-led, or customer-led approaches, each requiring alignment of internal capabilities with external value creation. Marketing, in this context, becomes the lens through which firms make disciplined and strategic choices about where to play and how to win.
Can you share a moment or student success story that’s stuck with you?
One student working in financial services shared that the course transformed how she viewed her client portfolio. After learning to evaluate customer lifetime value, she restructured her account management approach and began advocating for service investments tied to predicted customer value. Within a few months, she saw measurable gains in retention and upsell metrics. It was a great example of translating theory into impact and of marketing influencing broader business performance.
What excites you most about the future of business education or your field?
What excites me most about the future of business education is the growing recognition that marketing is not just about messaging or promotion; it is about strategic value creation. As firms become more customer-centric and data-driven, the ability to connect insights about customer behavior with decisions about innovation, pricing, and resource allocation becomes central to competitive advantage. This shift places marketing at the core of the enterprise and creates new opportunities for students to lead with a customer value mindset. I am also energized by how technology is enabling more experiential and real-time learning, allowing us to bring live cases, data, and strategic challenges directly into the classroom.
What advice would you give to incoming MBA students?
My advice to incoming MBA students is to approach the program not just as a way to acquire knowledge, but as an opportunity to reshape how you think about business problems. Stay curious, challenge assumptions, and focus on building frameworks that support disciplined and strategic decision-making. Invest in understanding how value is created and captured across functions, from marketing and finance to operations and analytics, because strong leadership depends on seeing how the pieces work together. Most importantly, take ownership of your learning. The more actively you apply ideas to real-world situations, the more impactful your MBA experience will be.
Is there anything you’d like to highlight about your research, industry partnerships, or other projects?
My research focuses on strategic marketing, with particular emphasis on customer value, AI, B2B marketing, and interorganizational relationships. I have published extensively on topics such as marketing strategy, peer effects, and digital transformation, often using advanced causal inference and machine learning methods. My work includes collaborations with both academic and industry partners, and I have served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Marketing Research. A central priority in my research is ensuring that it addresses real-world business challenges while contributing to theory. This commitment has shaped projects with firms across sectors including healthcare, industrials, and enterprise technology.
Is there a student, colleague, or industry partner you’d like to recognize?
Originally Published on October 2, 2025.