Madhu Viswanathan is Associate Professor of Marketing, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he has been on the faculty since receiving a PhD in Business Administration from the University of Minnesota in 1990.  He focuses on two programs of research; measurement and research methodology, and literacy, poverty, and marketplace behaviors. 

His research program on measurement and research methodology stems from a belief that the existing literature on measurement is largely statistical and needs to be demystified.  Hence, the focus of this research program is in understanding the nature of measurement error and following this line of reasoning through to implications for measure and method development. His work in this area includes a book entitled Measurement Error and Research Design (Sage, 2005; http://www.sagepub.com/book.aspx?pid=10505).  This book, targeted to audiences in the social science, uses an in-depth conceptual examination of measurement error to develop insights for designing and using measures and methods. 

His research on literacy, poverty, and marketplace behaviors examines low-literate consumer behavior in the US and low-literate buyer and seller behavior in subsistence marketplaces, i.e., in contexts across resource and literacy barriers where economic and cognitive constraints can be severe.  This work has been supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.  Publications stemming from this research include a book, Enabling Consumer and Entrepreneurial Literacy in Subsistence Marketplaces: Research-Based Education Across Literacy and Resource Barriers (Springer, 2007). 

His research has been published in journals in several disciplines; Computer, Speech, and Language, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Marketing Letters, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and Psychology and Marketing.  He has served in several positions in academic organizations as Conference Chair Membership Chair (1999-2000) and Secretary-Treasurer in the Society for Consumer Psychology; as the Chair of the Consumer Behavior Special Interest Group, as Consumer Behavior Track Chair (1997), and as Conference Chair in the American Marketing Association.  He is currently serving on the editorial boards of the Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Psychology and Marketing and has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Consumer Research. 

He teaches courses on research methods at all levels; empirical research methods for doctoral students and marketing research for undergraduate and MBA students.  He is currently part of a cross-functional team teaching a yearlong course on Product and Market Development for Subsistence Marketplaces (http://www.business.uiuc.edu/~madhuv/submktcoursemainpage.html).