Testimonials

Over the years, many individuals have been the recipient of funding assistance through our granting partners and have achieved great successes using this support.

Although the Sheth Foundation keeps track of all the recipients – both organizations and individuals – it is always a delight to learn about the perspectives and personal experiences of the people who have been positively impacted by our work. Please share your Sheth Foundation-funded grant story with us.

Travel Stipend

I am very greatful to Sheth Foundation for giving generous support to PhD students like me. I am attending AIB 2015 conference in India and presenting my research. I am receiving very insightful feedback from the fraternity. All this has been possible only due to the travel grant that I received from the foundation. Thank you very much and I hope I will get an opportunity to contribute to the cause undertaken by the foundation.

Kiran Awate
Kiran Awate
Doctoral Student of The Ohio State University
ACR Dissertation Award

The Sheth foundation supported my doctoral dissertation, which was a costly project. I am grateful for the financial support I received. The foundation also provided helpful comments on my work, which contributed positively to the quality of the dissertation. The foundation values and rewards work that is relevant not only to practitioners or academics, but also has implications for public policy. I am very thankful for their involvement in and continued support of the ACR doctoral dissertation awards.

Brent McFerran
Brent McFerran
Assistant Professor of Marketing of University of British Columbia
ACR Dissertation Award

The SHETH Dissertation award in consumer psychology, for which I was a runner-up, is noteworthy to me in several respects. First, as part of the application process, the reviewers provided useful feedback on my proposal, which influenced my thinking and the subsequent experiments I ultimately carried out. Second, as a runner-up I was given funding to present at the Society for Consumer Psychology, which served as an excellent way to share and receive feedback on my dissertation as a graduate student. These were influential in my career as they culminated in successfully publishing my research in the society’s journal, the Journal of Consumer Psychology. Thus, to me, the award, and the activities attached to it, provided a remarkable means for cultivating and stimulating the thinking and ideas early in my career. I valued the experience so much that I urge Ph.D. students to apply for the award.

Derek Rucker
Derek Rucker
Associate Professor of Marketing of Northwestern University
ACR Dissertation Award

Being a winner of the Sheth Foundation Dissertation Award (2006) has always been a great honor to me, and has a profound… impact on me throughout these years. It always inspires me to work hard, pursue excellence and excel in academic performance. Also it always reminds me of the spirit of “abundant life: to live a prosperous life through contributing to the marketing area. Generous financial support from the Sheth Foundation helps fulfill many doctoral students’ dreams and enrich their life experience through engaging in marketing activities. I always feel grateful to the Foundation for the wonderful memories and experience I had at the consortium, as well as the financial support at the critical stage of my doctoral study!!

Liangyan Wang
Wang Liangyan
Assistant Professor of Antai Management School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Travel Stipend

Most doctoral programs provide stipend for the doctoral students, but very little money for travel and conferences, this is true even for faculty at many places. We were lucky to have the Sheth travel money to cover our trips to some important conferences to know the most current research in our field and also start to socialize with the future colleague. And I have found that the trips I have been during my doctoral program very beneficial for my research program development. Over the years, I have developed three broad research topics such as self-construal, decision making and global-local identity, all these topics were partly initiated or developed from some conferences I attended back in my Pitt program.

Yinlong Zhang
Yinlong Zhang
Associate Professor of Marketing of COB, University of Texas at San Antonio
Travel Stipend

The Sheth Foundation allowed me to travel to a conference overseas which directly related to my research interests. That was my first exposure to researchers from all over the world doing interesting research and it helped foster my enthusiasm for that area. I eventually wrote my dissertation in that particular area and still continue to do research on that topic today. It was great to have the ability to connect with such scholars at such an early stage in my academic career.

Linda Tuncay Zayer
Linda Tuncay
Assistant Professor of Loyola University

I was a doctoral student at the University of Pittsburgh from 1999 to 2004. The Sheth Foundation helped me start a project on consumers’ Willingness-to-pay. They generously provided financial supports for the data collection and a conference presentation (Marketing Science 2003). The findings of this project resulted in a publication at JMR in 2007. The project was critical to my academic career by giving me the first A pub. I am truly grateful for the opportunity provided to me by the Sheth Foundation.My students have benefited from this generous support over the years. Thank you.

Tuo Wang
Tuo Wang
Assistant Professor of Kent State University
AIB Doctoral Student Consortium

I am a doctoral student from South Korea. I participated at 2016 AIB Doctoral Consortium in New Orleans. I very much enjoyed the opportunity to be in the consortium and learned many things. I was awarded with travel stipend which helped me a lot for financing my travel expense. I would like to say thank you to the Sheth Foundation for financing AIB doctoral student consortium and for the travel stipend. The consortium helped me with developing my dissertation further and meeting scholars from many different countries as well as doctoral students from different countries. I also learned a lot from many different interactive sessions and presentation during the conference. I am truly grateful for the opportunity and support provided by the Sheth Foundation. Thank you!

Su Yeon
Su Jin Yeon
Doctoral Student of South Korea
Travel Stipend

I attended the AIB 2017 conference in Dubai, and benefitted from the travel stipends sponsored by the Sheth Foundation. Thank you for providing me with such an opportunity. As a doctoral student, the doctoral consortium provided a great platform to present my research and get feedback from renowned scholars in the field.

Theresa Onaji Benson
Tess Onaji-Benson
ACR Dissertation Award

In 2008, I was fortunate to receive the Association for Consumer Research (ACR)/Sheth Foundation Dissertation Grant in the Cross-Cultural/Global Track. I had also been selected to represent the university where I was studying for my PhD (The University of California, Irvine), as UC Irvine’s Consortium Fellow to attend the 2008 American Marketing Association (AMA) Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium. In 2007 and 2009, I was again a recipient of the Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Sheth Foundation Marketing Doctoral Student Association Travel Grants, which allowed me to attend the AMS conferences in those years. The paper I presented at the 2007 AMS conference in Coral Gables, FL was awarded the Jane K. Fenyo Best Paper Award for Student Research. I benefited not only from the financial components of the awards, which allowed me to present my research at conferences and complete my dissertation, but the recognition allowed my research to be acknowledged by my peers in academia.


To say that the Sheth Foundation has had a tremendous impact on my academic career would be an understatement. I have a tremendous respect for Madhuri and Jagdish Sheth and what the Sheth Foundation has committed to achieving in the marketing academic community. Like many other doctoral students, I have had the opportunity to interact with Jagdish Sheth and benefit from his advice and kindness to doctoral students. As an assistant professor, I am convinced that my path to successful completion of the doctoral degree in marketing, and my subsequent acceptance of an academic position, was facilitated by the indirect support of the Sheth Foundation during my years in the doctoral program. Thank you.

Samantha Cross
Samantha Cross
Assistant Professor, Marketing of Iowa State University