Faculty Profile

Dr. Ajitha’s predominant teaching focus includes Branding, Luxury Marketing, and Marketing Metrics for Managers. Over the last five years, she has taught at the Amrita School of Business (Coimbatore) and the School of Entrepreneurship and Management Studies (SRM University AP), and has also had a short stint in the industry. She has held various academic and administrative positions such as Research Head, Area Chair – Marketing, Champion for Assurance of Learning (oral and written communication), and Programme Coordinator for Hybrid Classes. In addition, she has organized several research seminars to support and benefit the research community.

Awarded a UGC Research Fellowship, she earned her Ph.D. in Marketing from NIT Trichy. Her research interests include Luxury Marketing and Counterfeiting, Fashion and Brand Management, New Technology Adoption, Consumer Culture, Social Studies, Values, and Ethics. She has published research papers in leading ABS-listed journals such as Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Journal of Brand Management, and Fashion Marketing & Management.

She has also collaborated with researchers on a COVID-19 managerial policy project, which was published in the SCI-indexed journal Transboundary and Emerging Diseases, listed in the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Research Database, and recognized as one of the most downloaded articles in Elsevier publications.

Dr. Ajitha has presented her research papers at several prestigious international and national marketing conferences, including the Association for Consumer Research (ACR), American Marketing Association (AMA), Academy of Indian Marketing (AIM), Association for Psychological Science (APS), USA, Luxury Louken Group (Singapore), UEH (Vietnam), and Curtin University (Australia).

She received the “Best Paper” award from Emerald Publications at the NASMEI Marketing Conference held at IIM Indore and recently won the “Best Paper in the Marketing Track” award at the IIM Kashipur Conference. She also won the title of “Market Master” for securing first place in the Marketplace Simulation Game organized by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA. She received a Gold Medal in her postgraduate programme and secured a university rank in her undergraduate programme.

She serves as an ad hoc reviewer for top ABS-listed marketing journals and has contributed as an advisory member for academic conferences. Additionally, she has been invited as a guest speaker at various academic institutions across India.