Eva Ascarza

Eva Ascarza is the Jakurski Family Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Marketing Unit, teaching the Marketing course in the MBA required curriculum.

As a marketing modeler, Professor Ascarza uses tools from statistics, economics, and machine learning to answer relevant marketing questions. Her main research areas are customer analytics and customer relationship management, with special attention to the problem of customer retention. She uses field experimentation (e.g., A/B testing) as well as econometric modeling and machine learning tools not only to understand and predict patterns of behavior, but also to optimize the impact of firms’ interventions. Her research has appeared in leading marketing journals including Marketing Science and Journal of Marketing Research. She received the 2014 Frank Bass award, awarded to the best marketing paper derived from a Ph.D. thesis published in an INFORMS-sponsored journal. Her research has been recognized as a Paul E. Green Award finalist in 2016 and 2017, awarded to the best article in the Journal of Marketing Research that demonstrates the greatest potential to contribute significantly to the practice of marketing research. She was named a Marketing Science Institute Young Scholar in 2017 and serves on the editorial review board of several top marketing journals including Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, and Quantitative Marketing and Economics.

Professor Ascarza earned a Ph.D. in marketing from London Business School, a B.S. in mathematics at the Universidad de Zaragoza (Spain), and a M.S. in economics and finance from Universidad de Navarra (Spain). Prior to joining HBS, she was an associate professor in the marketing department at Columbia Business School.

AREAS OF INTEREST

• analytics
• customer profitability analysis
• customer relationship management
• marketing

Education

• PhD London Business School
• MS Universidad de Navarra
• BS Universidad de Zaragoza

PUBLICATIONS

• Ascarza, Eva, and Ayelet Israeli. "Eliminating Unintended Bias in Personalized Policies Using Bias Eliminating Adapted Trees (BEAT)." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (forthcoming).
• Padilla, Nicolas, and Eva Ascarza. "Overcoming the Cold Start Problem of CRM Using a Probabilistic Machine Learning Approach." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) (forthcoming).
• Ascarza, Eva. "Research: When A/B Testing Doesn't Tell You the Whole Story." Harvard Business Review Digital Articles (June 23, 2021).
• Ascarza, Eva, Michael Ross, and Bruce G.S. Hardie. "Why You Aren't Getting More from Your Marketing AI." Harvard Business Review 99, no. 4 (July–August 2021): 48–54.
• Ascarza, Eva, Scott A. Neslin, Oded Netzer, Zachery Anderson, Peter S. Fader, Sunil Gupta, Bruce Hardie, Aurelie Lemmens, Barak Libai, David T. Neal, Foster Provost, and Rom Schrift. "In Pursuit of Enhanced Customer Retention Management: Review, Key Issues, and Future Directions." (pdf) Special Issue on 2016 Choice Symposium. Customer Needs and Solutions 5, nos. 1-2 (March 2018): 65–81.
• Ascarza, Eva. "Retention Futility: Targeting High-Risk Customers Might Be Ineffective." (pdf) Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 55, no. 1 (February 2018): 80–98.
• Ascarza, Eva, Oded Netzer, and Bruce G.S. Hardie. "Some Customers Would Rather Leave Without Saying Goodbye." (pdf) Marketing Science 37, no. 1 (January–February 2018): 54–77.
• Ascarza, Eva, Peter Ebbes, Oded Netzer, and Matthew Danielson. "Beyond the Target Customer: Social Effects in CRM Campaigns." (pdf) Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 54, no. 3 (June 2017): 347–363.
• Ascarza, Eva, Raghuram Iyengar, and Martin Schleicher. "The Perils of Proactive Churn Prevention Using Plan Recommendations: Evidence from a Field Experiment." (pdf) Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 53, no. 1 (February 2016): 46–60.
• Ascarza, Eva, and Bruce G.S. Hardie. "A Joint Model of Usage and Churn in Contractual Settings." (pdf) Marketing Science 32, no. 4 (July–August 2013): 570–590.
• Ascarza, Eva, Anja Lambrecht, and Naufel Vilcassim. When Talk Is "Free": The Effect of Tariff Structure on Usage Under Two- and Three-Part Tariffs. (pdf) Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 49, no. 6 (December 2012): 882–900.

AWARDS & HONORS

• Finalist for the 2021 Weitz-Winer-O'Dell Award for “The Perils of Proactive Churn Prevention Using Plan Recommendations: Evidence from a Field Experiment” (Journal of Marketing Research (JMR), 2016) with Raghuram Iyengar and Martin Schleicher.
• Selected as a Marketing Science Institute Scholar in 2020.
• Winner of the 2019 Erin Anderson Award for Emerging Female Marketing Scholar and Mentor from the American Marketing Association.
• Finalist for the 2019 MSI Robert D. Buzzell Award from the Marketing Science Institute for “In Pursuit of Enhanced Customer Retention Management: Review, Key Issues, and Future Directions” (Customer Needs and Solutions, 2018) with Scott A. Neslin, Oded Netzer, Zachery Anderson, Peter S. Fader, Sunil Gupta, Bruce G.S. Hardie, Aurélie Lemmens, Barak Libai, David Neal, Foster Provost, and Rom Schrift.
• Winner of the 2018 Paul E. Green Award from the Journal of Marketing Research for "Retention Futility: Targeting High-Risk Customers Might Be Ineffective" (February 2018).
• Selected as an AMA-Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium Faculty Fellow by the American Marketing Association in 2015 and 2018.
• Finalist for the 2017 Paul E. Green Award from the Journal of Marketing Research for “Beyond the Target Customer: Social Effects in CRM campaigns” (June 2017) with Peter Ebbes, Oded Netzer and Matthew Danielson.
• Selected as a Marketing Science Institute Young Scholar in 2017.
• Finalist for the 2016 Paul E. Green Award from the Journal of Marketing Research for “The Perils of Proactive Churn Prevention using Plan Recommendations: Evidence from a Field Experiment” (February 2016) with Raghuram Iyengar and Martin Schleicher.
• Winner of the 2014 Frank M. Bass Dissertation Paper Award for “A Joint Model of Usage and Churn in Contractual Settings.”
• Selected as an INFORMS Doctoral Consortium Fellow at the University of British Columbia in 2008.
• Selected as an AMA-Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium Fellow by the American Marketing Association in 2007.