Mainak Sarkar, Ph.D.
Teaching Areas:
Marketing Analytics & AI, Marketing Management, MS-MarketingResearch Areas:
Artificial Intelligence in Marketing, Digital/Social Media MarketingBiography and Education
Prof. Mainak Sarkar, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at the College of Business, University of Michigan-Dearborn, USA. He received his Ph.D. in Marketing from ESSEC Business School, France in 2022. He was formerly a Visiting Scholar at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and previously worked as an Assistant Professor at University of Stavanger, Norway.
Prof. Sarkar’s research focuses on artificial intelligence methods in marketing, and various topics in digital marketing such as online word-of-mouth, platforms, etc.
Education
Ph.D. from ESSEC Business School, France, 2022
Visiting Scholar at Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2022
M.B.A from Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India, 2015
B. Tech from West Bengal University of Technology, India, 2011
Teaching and Research
Research
Prof. Sarkar's research focuses on customer relationship management (CRM), AI applications in marketing, and digital marketing topics (platforms, reviews, etc.). His dissertation titled “Artificial Intelligence Models for Customer Relationship Management” introduced deep learning sequence models (particularly Long-short term memory or LSTM models) to customer relationship management (CRM) literature in marketing. His research on LSTM models made it into the top 10 most-downloaded papers on SSRN in the categories of CRM (Top Ten), Managerial Marketing (Top Ten), and Marketing Science (Top Ten).
His research has been published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Interactive Marketing, and the Journal of Macromarketing. His paper on LSTM Models in direct marketing was a Finalist for the Journal of Interactive Marketing Best Paper Award 2021, and his research on a dual-LSTM model for customer lifetime value (CLV) distributions received the University of Michigan Empowering Research with AI Award 2026.
Prof. Sarkar has presented his research at several national and international conferences including the Artificial Intelligence in Management Conference at the University of Southern California, the University of Michigan AI Research Symposium, the Academy of Marketing Science Conference, the INFORMS Marketing Science Conference, the Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Business Analytics Conference at Columbia Business School, the EMAC Annual Conference, and Theory + Practice in Marketing.
Teaching
Prof. Sarkar’s teaching interests include Marketing Management, Marketing Analytics & AI, Digital Marketing, Marketing Strategy, and Marketing Research. Prof. Sarkar brings extensive international teaching experience having taught in France, Norway and the US.