Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Kevin Lane Keller
E. B. Osborn Professor of Marketing,
Tuck School of Business,
Dartmouth College
Kevin Lane Keller’s expertise lies in branding and marketing management. His specific research interest is how theories and concepts related to consumer behavior can improve marketing strategies.
Professor Keller has consulted to some of the world’s most successful brands, including Accenture, American Express, Disney, Ford, Intel, Levi Strauss, L.L.Bean, Nike, Procter & Gamble, and Samsung. He has served as an expert witness in consumer class actions, and matters involving exclusionary practices, brand valuation, and trade secrets.
Professor Keller is an authority on building, measuring, and managing brand equity strategies. His textbook Strategic Brand Management has been adopted at leading business schools and firms. He is also coauthor with Philip Kotler of the all-time best-selling introductory MBA marketing textbook, Marketing Management.
His research has been published in all four of the major marketing journals—the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, and Marketing Science. With over one hundred published papers, Professor Keller’s research is widely cited and has received numerous awards. A highly sought-after speaker, he has made keynote speeches and conducted marketing seminars to top executives all over the world.
Previously, Professor Keller was on the faculty at Stanford University, where he also served as the head of the marketing group. He has been on the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a visiting professor at Duke University and the Australian Graduate School of Management.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Avi Goldfarb
Rotman Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare,
Professor of Marketing,
Rotman School of Management,
University of Toronto
Avi Goldfarb is a prominent expert on the economics of information technology and digital markets. Professor Goldfarb specializes in online consumer behavior, as well as the impact of technology on marketing, competition, and healthcare. He analyzes an array of topics related to online advertising, including ad targeting, search engine advertising and pricing, crowdfunding platforms, consumer privacy, artificial intelligence, and branding.
Professor Goldfarb’s work has been cited by the White House and the European Commission. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary about the digital advertising ecosystem, data privacy, and competition policy and regulation.
Professor Goldfarb has written extensively about the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning in business, particularly their impact on productivity, market power, innovation, and employment. He coauthored the book Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence, and coedited two academic volumes on Economic Analysis of the Digital Economy and The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: An Agenda.
Professor Goldfarb has published award-winning articles in such leading journals as Management Science, the Journal of Marketing Research, and the American Economic Review. He serves as a senior editor at Marketing Science. His research has also been cited in the Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Professor Goldfarb is a research associate in the Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
At the Rotman School of Management, Professor Goldfarb has received multiple awards for excellence in teaching. He has held visiting appointments at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Columbia Business School, and Boston University. Professor Goldfarb serves as chief data scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab, a nonprofit organization that helps science-based startup companies to scale up. He also consults to organizations on digital and artificial intelligence strategy.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Pinar Yildirim
Associate Professor of Marketing,
The Wharton School,
Associate Professor of Economics,
University of Pennsylvania;
Senior Fellow, Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition,
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Pinar Yildirim is a quantitative marketing and economics expert specializing in media, technology, and information economics. Combining applied theory and empirical analysis, Professor Yildirim studies online platforms, artificial intelligence (AI), privacy, digitization, and social networks. The American Marketing Association (AMA) honored her in 2020 with the Erin Anderson Award, which recognizes a female marketing scholar likely to become a leading academic in the field.
In her research, Professor Yildirim analyzes such topics as advertising and competitive product positioning, the role of choice in two-sided platforms, and the incentive of platforms to moderate content. Professor Yildirim also studies social network design, the impact of advertising on media content, and the use of social network data in credit scoring. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) noted her work on social media and political contributions in 2021 proposed rulemaking involving political programming.
Professor Yildirim’s research has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals, including the American Economic Review, Marketing Science, the Journal of Marketing Research, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, and Management Science. She also serves on the editorial boards of Marketing Science and the Journal of Marketing Research. Numerous mainstream media outlets have covered her work, including CNN, Forbes, the New York Times, NPR, Politico, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.
At Wharton, Professor Yildirim has received awards for teaching excellence. She teaches undergraduate and M.B.A. courses in marketing research and marketing strategy for technology platforms and executive education modules focused on digital marketing, business in the metaverse economy, and marketing for financial firms.
Professor Yildirim is also a Faculty Research Fellow in the Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Katja Seim
Sharon Oster Professor of Economics and Management,
Yale School of Management,
Yale University
Katja Seim specializes in topics related to industrial organization, regulation, and antitrust. Professor Seim served as the chief economist at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from 2016 to 2017.
In her current research, Professor Seim studies the role of consumer inattention in firm pricing and competition in online markets. She analyzes how firms make product introduction, market entry, and pricing decisions in response to public policies involving subsidization, entry and technology deployment regulations, competition, and tax.
Professor Seim’s work also evaluates how market power affects government efforts to efficiently procure goods and services and sell assets. She has substantial expertise in the economics of price setting, including price discrimination and nonlinear pricing, particularly in the context of communications and information industries.
Professor Seim’s work has appeared in leading academic journals, such as the American Economic Review, Econometrica, Marketing Science, and the RAND Journal of Economics. She is a coeditor of the American Economic Review, and formerly coedited the RAND Journal of Economics.
Professor Seim is a research fellow at the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) and the Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). She is a nonresident fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution.
At Yale, Professor Seim teaches courses on industrial organization, probability modeling and statistics, and regulation. She previously served on the faculties of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
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.
Featured Publications
How can we help you?
For more information or assistance with a specific matter, please contact us.
