Dr. Eric R. Spangenberg
With a 30 year career dedicated to excellence in business research and education, Eric R. Spangenberg was invited to serve as dean and professor of marketing at The Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine, in June 2014.
Dr. Spangenberg is atypical among academics in that he is an accomplished scholar as well as a proven strategic leader. He enjoys an international reputation for his visionary business acumen and innovative leadership style across all business disciplines. Similarly, he is well known for making unique and practically-relevant intellectual contributions in the fields of marketing and consumer psychology. Spangenberg has repeatedly built and motivated successful teams, from international research teams publishing in elite academic journals to integrated academic and business collaborations and communities.
Spangenberg served in several leadership positions on faculty senate before entering administration. He is an active volunteer for the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the largest and most prestigious international accrediting body for business schools.
Spangenberg earned his PhD from the University of Washington in 1990 and joined the faculty at the Carson College of Business at Washington State University where he was named the Maughmer Freedom Philosophy Chair and Professor of Marketing in 2003. He also served as dean of the Carson College from 2005 to 2014. International appointments include a Fulbright International Education Administrator position in France and Germany in 2014, and his position as Permanent Visiting Faculty in the Center for Customer Insight at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland since 2010.
At UC Irvine, Spangenberg has been instrumental in motivating and developing several initiatives, including engaging and strengthening ties with the external business community both locally and abroad. He has motivated strategic curricular updates to the MBA as well as development of a hybridized (partially online), part-time MBA program, one-year specialized masters programs in finance, data analytics and entrepreneurship, and a completely online minor in undergraduate business to help meet the University’s overwhelming demand for business education. International expansion initiatives include an international residential for undergraduates and several additional residentials for MBAs including a unique program in Cuba. Executive education programs have been grown through partnerships with Orange County-located businesses as well as Swiss, Korean, and Chinese universities. He also oversaw The Merage School’s strategic planning process articulating a clear vision and reward structure; he successfully navigated a (once a decade) UC Senate school review, established an AACSB plan and process to ensure successful maintenance of accreditation, and he has overseen the recruitment of new faculty across several disciplines helping to enrich diversity of The Merage School’s faculty mix.
Previously at Washington State University, Spangenberg motivated strategic curriculum revisions, realized historic increases in MBA and PhD enrollments, and established several entrepreneurial academic initiatives both domestically and abroad. He led a team in developing top ranked online MBA programs, generating significant revenue streams. Online undergraduate degree programs at the Carson College of Business grew by more than 50 percent and international business programs were highly ranked during Spangenberg’s tenure. As a committed fundraiser, he led the Carson College in successfully raising over $75 million during his time as dean.
Spangenberg is a highly cited and widely recognized international scholar. He has authored or co-authored more than 50 journal articles, book chapters and other material across several key areas of research in marketing and consumer psychology. His topics of inquiry include: environmental psychology, consumer skepticism toward advertising, question-behavior effects, psychometrics, and brand extended self-construal. Most known for his work on the effects of olfactory and musical cues in the retail environment and the effects of self-prediction on people’s behavior, his work has been popularly covered in The Economist, Fast Company, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, as well as on the BBC, CBS, Yahoo News, Salon and Boing, plus numerous other international print, television and online media outlets. He has also been consulted by such outlets and commercial interests as an expert in these areas as well as regarding the business of online education.
Spangenberg maintains professional affiliations with the Association for the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business, the Association for Consumer Research, the American Psychological Association, and the Society for Consumer Psychology.