Jehoshua Eliashberg

Jehoshua Eliashberg
  • Sebastian S. Kresge Professor Emeritus of Marketing
  • Professor Emeritus of Operations, Information and Decisions

Contact Information

  • office Address:

    767 Jon M. Huntsman Hall
    3730 Walnut Street
    University of Pennsylvania
    Philadelphia, PA 19104

Research Interests: marketing and strategic issues related to the entertainment and pharmaceutical industries, marketing research, marketing/operations/r&d interface, new product forecasting and planning models, new product planning and forecasting models, pricing

Links: CV, Google Scholar

Overview

Jehoshua (Josh) Eliashberg is the Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing and Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He also held visiting scholar positions at the Business Schools of The University of Chicago, Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok, Thailand), Penn State University, INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France), Erasmus University (Rotterdam, The Netherlands), Singapore Management University, Carnegie-Mellon University, The University of British Columbia, UCLA, Time Inc., and at the Operations Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories.

Professor Eliashberg received a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology at Haifa, an M.B.A. from Tel-Aviv University, and a doctoral degree in Decision Sciences and Marketing from Indiana University. He also received an Honorary Masters from the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor Eliashberg’s research interests are in developing models and methodologies to solve business problems. His research has focused on various issues including new product development and feasibility analysis, marketing/manufacturing/R&D interface, and competitive strategies. He has particular interest in the media and entertainment, pharmaceutical, and the hi-tech industries. He has authored numerous articles appearing in major academic journals. His work in the entertainment industry has been the subject of articles appearing in BusinessWeek, The Christian Science Monitor, The Financial Post, Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, Variety, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post.

He has co-edited the books, Handbooks in Operations Research and Management Science: Marketing (with G. L. Lilien) and Managing Business Interfaces: Marketing, Engineering, and Manufacturing Perspectives (with Amiya K. Chakravarty). Professor Eliashberg has held various editorial positions in leading professional journals including: the Marketing Departmental Editor in Management Science, an Editorial Board member for Marketing Science, the European Journal of Operational Research, Marketing Letter, and Senior Editor for Manufacturing and Service Operations Management. He is currently the Series Editor of Springer’s International Series in Quantitative Marketing and the Editor-in-Chief of Foundations and Trends in Marketing. He was elected a Fellow of the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science for his contributions to the field in June 2010 and was named a Fellow of The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences in November 2010. He won the 2020 Gil Churchill Award which recognizes an individual’s contribution to marketing research including new methodologies, seminal publications, books, awards, and other notable contributions. His other professional services have included membership on the advisory boards of the National Science Foundation, the American Councils for International Education, and the academic liaison committee of the CMO Council.

Professor Eliashberg has been teaching the following courses at Wharton: Marketing Research; Models for Marketing Strategy; New Product Management; Design, Manufacturing, and Marketing Integration; and Analysis of the Media and Entertainment Industries. Prior to joining academia, he was employed for a number of years as an electronic engineer and marketing. He has participated extensively in various executive education programs. His executive education and consulting activities include AccentHealth, AstraZeneca, AT&T, Booz, Allen & Hamilton, Bell Atlantic, Campbell Soup, Cheil Communications, CTV Television Network (Canada), Domino’s Pizza, Franklin Mint, General Motors, Givaudan, HBO, IBM, Independence Blue Cross, Inmar, Janssen Pharmaceutica Inc., Johnson & Johnson, L G Electronics, Lucent Technologies, Multimedia Development Corp. (Malaysia), Pathe Cinema (Holland), Philip Morris, The Siam Cement Group (Thailand), Sirius Satellite Radio, Warner Home Video, Weave Innovations Inc., Woodside Travel Trust, and Wyeth/Pfizer Pharmaceuticals.

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Research

  • Jason Ho, Jehoshua Eliashberg, Charles Weinberg, Berend Wierenga (2023), On enjoying watching movies in a theatre versus at home: a comparative analysis, Marketing Letters.

  • Jehoshua Eliashberg and Yi Liu, On the Role of Trailer as a Marketing Research Tool: The Economic Value of the Comments it Generates.

    Abstract: Trailers are commonly employed in the pre-launch campaigns of new products as an advertising tool to generate awareness and interest among the potential audience. In this paper, we argue that such trailers, whose costs range and are rising, should also be considered as a marketing research tool having additional economic value. The incremental value is driven by the audience comments data that the trailer of a new product generates. The data, once analyzed, can signal the post-release electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) that will prevail and can affect the new product success, but is uncertain to the product manager a priori. That is, trailers, if released early, have the potential to assist in making more informed pre-launch marketing decisions (specifically, advertising spending), and thus have additional economic values in guiding risk-mitigation strategies. This incremental value should thus be considered in the cost/benefit analysis of the trailer production. This paper quantifies such value by formulating various economic value of information (information value) metrics based on a Bayesian decision-theoretic framework, which are applicable to many product categories. We investigate the metrics both analytically and empirically, employing a dataset of 363 movies released in 2014-2018. The information value is analyzed with respect to the two key dimensions of the uncertain post-release eWOM: volume and valence. We carry out various sensitivity analyses, comparing the magnitudes of information value under different scenarios. Based on our dataset, we demonstrate that the volume of comments generated by early trailers is more critical than its valence and consequently has a higher incremental economic information value, which may be worth $240,000. We also find that the trailer comments of different genres have different economic values, with action movies having the highest.

  • Olivier Toubia, Jonah Berger, Jehoshua Eliashberg (2021), How Quantifying The Shape of Stories Predicts Their Success, Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences, Vol 118, Issue 26, June 2021, pp. 1-5.

  • Sarah Gelper, Renana Peres, Jehoshua Eliashberg (2018), Talk Bursts: The Role of Spikes in Prerelease Word-of-Mouth Dynamics, Journal of Marketing Research, 55 (6), pp. 801-817.

  • Grant Packard, Anocha Aribarg, Jehoshua Eliashberg, Natasha Foutz (2016), The Role of Network Embeddeness in Film Success, International Journal of Research in Marketing, 33 (2), pp. 328-342.

  • Jehoshua Eliashberg, Thorsten Hennig-Thurau, Charles B. Weinberg, Berend Wierenga (2016), Of Video Games, Music, Movies, and Celebrities, International Journal of Research in Marketing, 33 (2), pp. 241-245.

  • Jehoshua Eliashberg, Sam Hui, Z. John Zhang (2014), Assessing Box Office Performance Using Movie Scripts: A Kernel-based Approach, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 26 (11), pp. 2639-2648.

  • Delphine Manceau, Jehoshua Eliashberg, Vithala R. Rao, Meng Su (2014), A Diffusion Model for Preannonced Products, Customer Needs and Solutions, 1 (1), pp. 77-89.

  • Min Ding, Songting Dong, Jehoshua Eliashberg, Arun Gopalakrishnan, “Portfolio Management in New Drug Development”. In Innovation and Marketing in the Pharmaceutical Industry, edited by Min Ding, Jehoshua Eliashberg and Stefan Stremersch, (2014)

  • Mark A.A.M. Leenders and Jehoshua Eliashberg (2011), The Antecedents and Consequences of Restrictive Age-Based Ratings in the Global Motion Picture Industry, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Vol 28, Issue 4, December 2011, pp. 367-377.

    Abstract: This article analyzes one key characteristic shared by a growing number of industries. Specifically, their products and services are continuously monitored and evaluated by local third-party ratings systems. In this study, we focus on understanding the local drivers of restrictive age-based ratings in the motion picture industry and the effect of local ratings on a movie's performance at the box office. The results show that there is a significant negative relationship between restrictive ratings and opening weekend box-office performance. However, we find no significant effect with respect to cumulative box-office performance. In the second part of the study, we focus on the local regulatory system's role as a key driver of restrictive age-based ratings in the motion picture industry. Interestingly, the results suggest that the composition of the board that rates the movie plays a key role. Including pediatrics, psychology, or sociology experts in the evaluation board instead of only parents or laypeople has a strong effect and tends to lead to more lenient rating behavior. In addition, we find that larger ratings boards tend to be more restrictive than smaller ones and that industry representation is not necessarily associated with less restrictive ratings. Countries with cultures characterized as uncertainty avoidant, collective, and feminine also seem to be most lenient in their ratings. The implications of the results are discussed from both international marketing and public policy perspectives.

Teaching

All Courses

  • MKTG2120 - Data & Anlz For Mktg Dec

    This course introduces students to the fundamentals of data-driven marketing, including topics from marketing research and analytics. It examines the many different sources of data available to marketers, including data from customer transactions, surveys, pricing, advertising, and A/B testing, and how to use those data to guide decision-making. Through real-world applications from various industries, including hands-on analyses using modern data analysis tools, students will learn how to formulate marketing problems as testable hypotheses, systematically gather data, and apply statistical tools to yield actionable marketing insights.

  • MKTG2710 - Models For Mktg Strategy

    The course develops students’ skills in using analytics to make better marketing decisions. Compared to other courses in marketing analytics, the focus is less on ‘what is happening?’ or ‘what will happen?’ and more on ‘what should we do?’ I.e., the course moves beyond descriptive and predictive analytics into prescriptive analytics. It covers a variety of topics, models and tools: (1) Marketing mix modeling & optimization, (2) Choice modeling, choice-based conjoint analysis & market simulators, (3) Modeling churn & maximizing customer lifetime value, and (4) Quantifying causal effects in marketing. The course requires familiarity with Excel and linear regression from the very first day, but is otherwise self-contained. Lectures are organized around a mini-case or illustrate the model/technique at hand through one or more real-life applications.

  • MKTG3990 - Independent Study

  • MKTG7120 - Data & Anlz For Mktg Dec

    This course introduces students to the fundamentals of data-driven marketing, including topics from marketing research and analytics. It examines the many different sources of data available to marketers, including data from customer transactions, surveys, pricing, advertising, and A/B testing, and how to use those data to guide decision-making. Through real-world applications from various industries, including hands-on analyses using modern data analysis tools, students will learn how to formulate marketing problems as testable hypotheses, systematically gather data, and apply statistical tools to yield actionable marketing insights.

  • MKTG7710 - Models For Mktg Strategy

    The course develops students’ skills in using analytics to make better marketing decisions. Compared to other courses in marketing analytics, the focus is less on ‘what is happening?’ or ‘what will happen?’ and more on ‘what should we do?’ I.e., the course moves beyond descriptive and predictive analytics into prescriptive analytics. It covers a variety of topics, models and tools: (1) Marketing mix modeling & optimization, (2) Choice modeling, choice-based conjoint analysis & market simulators, (3) Modeling churn & maximizing customer lifetime value, and (4) Quantifying causal effects in marketing. The course requires familiarity with Excel and linear regression from the very first day, but is otherwise self-contained. Lectures are organized around a mini-case or illustrate the model/technique at hand through one or more real-life applications.

  • MKTG8990 - Independent Study

    A student contemplating an independent study project must first find a faculty member who agrees to supervise and approve the student's written proposal as an independent study (MKTG 899). If a student wishes the proposed work to be used to meet the ASP requirement, he/she should then submit the approved proposal to the MBA adviser who will determine if it is an appropriate substitute. Such substitutions will only be approved prior to the beginning of the semester.

Awards and Honors

In the News

Activity

Latest Research

Jason Ho, Jehoshua Eliashberg, Charles Weinberg, Berend Wierenga (2023), On enjoying watching movies in a theatre versus at home: a comparative analysis, Marketing Letters.
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In the News

Just ask Taylor Swift: Data make the case for movie theaters versus streaming
LA Times - 12/01/2023
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Wharton Magazine

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Wharton Magazine - 04/20/2016