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 2009, presented "The Moment of Truth: Understanding Consumer Behavior" at The Economist's Media Convergence Conference in Washington, D.C.
   
• 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. 
   
• September 15, 2009, presented "Neurological Correlates of Diminished Self-Control," with Kathleen Vohs, Neuroeconomics Conference, Evanston, IL.