Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Jonah Berger
Associate Professor of Marketing,
The Wharton School,
University of Pennsylvania
Jonah Berger is a renowned expert on word of mouth, influence, consumer behavior, and how products, ideas, and behaviors are shared and disseminated. Professor Berger analyzes the impact of digital and traditional marketing, as well as social media, on consumer behavior and product demand. He specializes in using sophisticated quantitative tools, such as natural language processing and automated content analysis, to gain behavioral insights from textual data. Professor Berger has also conducted hundreds of surveys, in both academic research and consulting matters. He has been retained as an expert witness and testified in multiple depositions and at trial.
In his research, Professor Berger assesses how text in online reviews, customer service calls, press releases, marketing communications, and other interactions can be used to gain insights about the impact of marketing. He has also studied what makes certain online content go viral, the effects of negative publicity, and how assortment size influences brand perceptions and choice.
Professor Berger is the author of bestselling books on consumer behavior, including Magic Words: What to Say to Get Your Way (2023); The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind (2020); Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior (2016); and Contagious: Why Things Catch On (2013). Amazon cited Contagious among its Best Business Books of the Year.
Professor Berger has published over fifty articles in leading academic journals, including the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Consumer Research. His coauthored article “What Makes Online Content Go Viral?” won Sage’s 2023 10-Year Impact Award, which recognizes articles with lasting influence in the decade since their publication. The Journal of Marketing Research also honored this article with its William F. O’Dell Award, for significant, long-term contribution to marketing theory, methodology, and/or practice.
The American Management Association named Professor Berger one of the top thirty leaders in business. He has consulted to major tech firms, global retailers, and leading nonprofit organizations.
Professor Berger has served on the editorial boards of Marketing Science and the Journal of Consumer Psychology, among others. In the mainstream media, the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine’s “Year in Ideas,” and Harvard Business Review have covered his research.
At the Wharton School, Professor Berger has received multiple awards for excellence in research and teaching. He has taught courses on consumer behavior and marketing management; his course on viral marketing ranks among the most in-demand on Wharton Online.
Before joining the Wharton School, Professor Berger held visiting academic appointments at Cornell NYC Tech, Cornell University, and Fuqua School of Business, Duke University.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Ashley Langer
Associate Professor of Economics,
Eller College of Management,
University of Arizona
Ashley Langer is an econometrics, energy, and industrial organization expert. Professor Langer applies sophisticated empirical methods to study regulation, competition, and firm and consumer behavior. She analyzes a range of economic issues, including those involving energy markets, transportation, and the environment. Professor Langer has testified on issues related to class certification and economic damages, including in such high-profile class actions as Guzman et al. v. Polaris Inc. et al. and Garcia et al. v. Volkswagen Group of America Inc. et al.
Professor Langer has analyzed consumer decisions, including those related to the automotive and oil industries. She has evaluated decisions on which vehicles to drive, how preferences form, when and where to purchase fuel, and whether to adopt electric vehicles. She has also investigated the impact of consumer demographic group preferences on vehicle pricing.
In her recent research, Professor Langer has assessed energy and environmental policy design issues. For example, she has analyzed international oil markets and the factors that influence pricing, as well as how Clean Air Act regulatory enforcement affects pollution levels and firms’ investment decisions. Further, she has studied the impact of energy policy on durable goods such as automobiles and residential solar. In particular, Professor Langer has examined how households respond to solar subsidies that change over time, how uncertainty surrounding policy enforcement affects coal power plant retirement and upgrade decisions, and how taxing vehicle mileage (rather than fuel consumption) changes Highway Trust Fund revenues. Her earlier work includes assessing the effect of congestion tolling on urban land use.
Professor Langer’s research has been published in leading academic journals, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Public Economics, and the Review of Economics and Statistics. She is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
At the University of Arizona, Professor Langer teaches courses in business strategy, empirical research methods, environmental economics, energy and environmental policy, and government regulation. She has been honored with several teaching and advising awards. In addition, Professor Langer presents on industrial organization and empirical research methods, as well as transportation, energy, and environmental topics, at professional conferences and universities in the United States and internationally.
Professor Langer previously taught at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. She was a visiting scholar at Columbia Business School and the Energy Policy Institute of Chicago, University of Chicago.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Jeffrey T. Prince
Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy,
Harold A. Poling Chair in Strategic Management,
Co-Director, Kelley Institute for Business Analytics,
Kelley School of Business,
Indiana University
Jeff Prince is an expert on the economics of technology and telecommunications markets. An empirical economist with extensive research in industrial organization and applied econometrics, Professor Prince analyzes the economics of digital platforms, the value of privacy, demand for personal computers, consumer adoption of video streaming services, and consumer usage of broadband and mobile internet. He has evaluated how firms compete on non-price attributes and the competitive effects of mergers in the airline industry. Professor Prince has also researched bundling of products in the telecommunications industry, and regulation and competition in healthcare markets.
Professor Prince served as chief economist at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from 2019 to 2020. While at the FCC, he coauthored the agency’s comments on the Department of Justice’s and Federal Trade Commission’s Draft 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines.
As an expert witness, Professor Prince has been retained in multiple high-profile matters. He has testified in deposition and at trial, on topics related to antitrust, intellectual property valuation, and damages. He has also consulted on telecommunications policy, competition policy and antitrust, damages, and survey design, including design of conjoint surveys.
Professor Prince has published his research in leading academic journals that include the American Economic Review, Management Science, and the Review of Industrial Organization. He coedits the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy and has served on the editorial board of Information Economics and Policy for more than a decade. In addition, Professor Prince’s research has been cited by the New York Times, Psychology Today, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal.
Professor Prince has been honored with awards for excellence and innovation in teaching. At Indiana University, he teaches courses on digital economics and predictive analytics for business strategy. Previously, he served on the faculty at Cornell University.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Anja Lambrecht
Professor of Marketing,
London Business School
Anja Lambrecht is an authority on the digital economy, digital marketing, and algorithmic bias. Using econometric methods and field experiments, Professor Lambrecht researches issues related to online advertising, promotion, pricing, and consumer behavior on the internet.
In her recent work, Professor Lambrecht has investigated apparent algorithmic bias and discrimination on digital platforms. She has conducted award-winning research that evaluates the performance of dynamically targeted online advertising, as well as its impact on consumers’ decisions. Professor Lambrecht also addresses a range of topics related to digital pricing, notably freemium strategy in mobile app markets, and how nonlinear pricing affects consumers’ choice and usage behavior.
She has presented her research in a variety of settings, and has participated in panel discussions at the Federal Trade Commission on privacy regulations and their impact on competition and innovation. She has also presented at the European Commission on the economics of competition in data markets.
Professor Lambrecht’s articles have been published in the Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, and Management Science. The Journal of Marketing Research honored her with both the William F. O’Dell and the Paul E. Green best paper awards for significant contributions to marketing research, methodology, and/or practice. She has served on several editorial boards, and is associate editor at Marketing Science and the Journal of Marketing. The Marketing Science Institute has recognized Professor Lambrecht as one of the most promising scholars in the field of marketing.
At London Business School, Professor Lambrecht teaches courses in marketing, online advertising, and price discrimination. Previously, she held visiting academic positions at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and Stanford Graduate School of Business. Earlier in her career, Professor Lambrecht worked at McKinsey & Company, where she focused on marketing and sales projects in the software, media, and telecommunications industries.
Consumer Fraud and Product Liability Capabilities
Cornerstone Research has addressed issues of certification, exposure, reliance, impact, and damages in class actions. Key questions in these cases may include whether common evidence can prove that certain challenged conduct caused each member of the proposed class to make a purchase and whether the challenged conduct injured each member of the proposed class. An additional consideration is whether each proposed class member’s damages, if any, can be determined by common proof. We have worked on class actions involving allegations of:
- The benefit of the bargain harm, where plaintiffs claim that consumers would have allegedly paid less or not purchased the product at issue had they not allegedly been misled or had defendants not acted in in bad faith, because of improper labeling, advertising, or disclosure
- Diminished resale value of a durable good due to the challenged conduct
- Demand and price inflation claims that plaintiffs argue caused class-wide impact, even for consumers who were not influenced by the challenged conduct
Class certification in these cases frequently turns on the particulars of the challenged conduct, the overall structure of the industry and the market, and the characteristics of individual transactions. We evaluate these issues through empirical research within a framework of sound economic concepts.
Individual actions involving allegations of fraud and misrepresentation are often brought by a defendant’s competitors. These cases may require a focus on the relevant market, quantification of the effect of the challenged conduct on demand and prices for competing products, and estimation of damages suffered by competitors due to the defendant’s alleged fraud or misrepresentation.
In addition to lost sales and price erosion, some plaintiffs may also seek reputational damages and punitive damages. We have substantial experience analyzing these specific types of claims, applying our expertise in economics, marketing, finance, econometrics, and accounting.
Our experience in individual actions includes allegations of fraud and misrepresentation in matters involving a broad array of industries and consumer products.
Cornerstone Research staff and experts have significant experience in survey design, including analyzing and implementing reliable sampling techniques. We regularly conduct and critique surveys of market participants to assess consumer behavior, attitudes, and preferences, and to address issues relating to exposure, reliance, and materiality. In some cases, we supplemented these empirical findings with analysis of data originally collected over the course of business as well as from publicly available data sources.
Cornerstone Research regularly formulates and implements empirical analyses to respond to economic and financial issues. We have specialized staff with expertise in advanced modeling and statistical techniques, including difference-in-differences, hedonic regression, and synthetic control methods, among others. We frequently use real-world, large datasets with sophisticated statistical and econometric methods.
We have experience working with experts to develop and implement rigorous, state-of-the-art content analysis techniques—including artificial intelligence and machine learning—to assess marketing messages (such as advertisements), social media and user-generated online content, and other content involving extensive textual data, such as public press spanning many years.
Conjoint analysis is a survey-based marketing research tool developed by academics to understand and estimate consumer preferences. It has been adopted by businesses and industry practitioners to help make decisions on new product development and market segmentation analysis, among other uses. Over the last several years, conjoint analysis has been increasingly proposed as a method to estimate class-wide damages in a variety of consumer class actions including product liability, false advertising, product labeling, and data privacy and data breach matters. However, the technique’s underlying assumptions and limitations render it unsuitable for calculating damages in a class action setting.
Automobile
Cornerstone Research has rich experience in analyzing causation, impact, and damages issues in the automobile industry. We have addressed allegations of benefit of the bargain harm and diminished resale value in these cases.
Consumer Finance
We have worked on consumer finance cases involving credit cards, checking accounts, and pension plan choices. Our experience encompasses fraud and misrepresentation allegations as well as deceptive advertising and inadequate disclosure claims.
Food, Beverage, and Dietary Supplements
In the food, beverage, and dietary supplements industries, Cornerstone Research has applied economic and statistical methods and marketing research techniques such as surveys to cases involving allegations of false advertising, omissions of material information, and product misrepresentation. We have worked on matters involving “All Natural” claims on product labels, health-related claims on product packaging and advertising, the amount of “slack-fill” in product packaging, the amounts of ingredients included in a product, and comparative advertising between competing products, among others.
Life Sciences and Healthcare
We have worked on several cases involving allegations of fraud and misrepresentation in life sciences and healthcare matters.
Technology
In several technology and manufacturing cases, attorneys have retained Cornerstone Research to analyze issues related to alleged false advertising, deception, product liability, and demand and price inflation.
Other Consumer Products
Our staff have assessed allegations of false advertising, deception, and product liability in many consumer products.
Data Privacy and Data Breach
Cornerstone Research has experience in high-profile data privacy and data breach matters, addressing a wide range of damages methodologies and analyses commonly used by plaintiffs in class actions in the United States.
Our experience covers all stages of litigation, including pre-litigation assessment of exposure, support for mediation, and expert testimony support at the class certification and merits phases. We also have substantial experience assisting clients in regulatory proceedings relating to data privacy or data breach issues in the United States and Europe.
Featured Cases
Selected Professionals
Our staff consultants contribute expertise in economics, finance, accounting, and marketing, as well as business acumen, familiarity with the litigation process, and a commitment to provide outstanding support.
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