Kathleen J. Kennedy, DBA

Kathleen’s career in marketing, strategy, and consumer research successfully spans both the academic and business worlds. Kathleen is currently an Associate Professor of Practice in the Retailing and Consumer Science program at the University of Arizona and teaches retail and marketing strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship, digital retailing, and sustainable consumption courses.

In 2017, Kathleen focused her academic and research efforts on retailing and consumer buying behavior, with a focus on retail innovation, the integration of AI/ML (Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning) retail services in shopping and consumer decision-making, and how retail innovation can increase the efficiency of the marketplace advancing sustainable consumption. Her current research is on understanding the role and effect of intelligent, self-learning AI/ML systems in shopper-retailer relationships and the underlying consumer buying process.

Kathleen is actively engaged in developing applied learning course experiences and education access. She is a 2022 CUES Fellowship Scholar and an Experiential Design Learning fellow.

Prior to joining the University of Arizona, Kathleen was on the Marketing faculty at The University of Akron (2011-2017). She concurrently served as Executive Director of the Taylor Institute for Direct Marketing (2011-2012) and as Research Director of the Suarez Applied Marketing Research Laboratories (2011-2015) where she led a 5-year initiative to advance innovative marketing research methods, and to apply consumer neuroscience methods in brand response, user experience, and ad testing research. She also was Executive Director of the Center of Innovative Entrepreneurship (2005-2006).

Kathleen previously was a senior marketing and e-commerce executive at Office Depot, Federated Department Stores (Macy’s Inc.), and other major retailers. She was also Managing Partner and Director of the Customer Centre for Loyalty Excellence at OgilvyOne Worldwide. Kathleen co-founded four successful marketing services businesses including Mindnav LLC, a leading-edge marketing research company developing consumer research and customer experience applications that enable insights not possible through traditional market research methods.

Her publications include “Research in reverse: Ad testing using an inductive consumer neuroscience approach” in the Journal of Business Research and “Measuring consumer neural activation to differentiate cognitive processing of advertising: Revisiting Krugman” in the European Journal of Marketing.

Kathleen holds a Doctor of Business Administration, Management Sciences Group from The University of Manchester (UK), Alliance Manchester Business School and a  Masters of Business Administration from the University of Miami (FL). She is currently a PhD Higher Education Policy candidate at the University of Arizona.

She lives and work in Tucson, Arizona, USA.