Wagner Kamakura
1950-2025
Wagner Kamakura got his BS in Aeronautical Mechanical engineering from the Instituto Tecnologico de Aeronautica (ITA), the most prestigious engineering school in Brazil. Subsequently, Wagner got a master’s in production engineering from Universidade de São Paulo (USP) and a master’s degree in business administration from Fundação Getulio Vargas in São Paulo. He got his doctoral degree from the University of Texas in Austin in 1982.
Wagner served on the faculty of several universities with distinction: State University of Buffalo in New York, Vanderbilt University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Iowa, Duke University, and finally Rice University.
Wagner was a prolific scholar, a dedicated teacher and a warm and kind colleague. Wagner was a celebrated global academic. His many recognitions bear testimony to this. Of course, he was celebrated and recognized by the American Marketing Association and INFORMS, and many scholarly journals. But the breadth and depth of his global presence and recognition was so special and unique: Here is a partial list: recognitions from the University of Granada in Spain, Tilburg University in the Netherlands, Monash University in Melbourne, and the University of New South Wales in Australia. In 2019, Wagner received the Fulbright Scholarship and a visiting professorship at the university of Lisbon in Portugal, in recognition and celebration of his long and illustrious career in academia.
Of his scholarship, Michel Wedel, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland, has this to say, “Without a doubt, Wagner had a tremendously successful career. He was one of the most impactful methodological researchers in our field and made a big impact through his position as an Editor in Chief of the Journal of Marketing Research as well. His paper on latent class choice models is a true classic that should feature in every PhD seminar.”
Listen to Gary Russell, Cedar Rapids Area Business Professor of Marketing, University of Iowa, “Wagner was one of the most influential marketing science academics of his generation. He pioneered the use of latent class and latent variable models in academic marketing. His book Market Segmentation: Conceptual and Methodological Foundations (with Michel Wedel) popularized the use of mixture models to organize consumers into segments based on purchase behavior. This work revolutionized academic research on choice modelling and paved the way for random coefficient segmentation models in marketing. His later work adapted ideas from spatial statistics to model spatial patterns of segmentation and menu choice models. He served on numerous editorial boards. He was Editor of Journal of Marketing Research.”
Carl Mela, T. Austin Finch Foundation Professor of Business Administration, Duke University, speaks to Wagner’s organic ability to combine rigor with relevance and address important problems facing practitioners. “Wagner was fond of saying those who can, do; those who can’t, teach; those who can’t teach research, those who can’t research, write books; and those who can’t write consult. But Wagner excelled at all those things. Another of his common quips was his concern that the marketing science field had evolved to “marketing science fiction.” While I think he was too pessimistic, it’s a testament to his accomplishments that his innovations worked so truly that they were widely adopted in industry. Some might not realize he was either the first or among the first in marketing to develop or use latent class models (1999 JMR), hidden Markov models (2006 JMR), event studies (1995 JM), brand measurement as model intercepts (1993 IJRM), and text mining (2012 SSRN). All have gained wide adoption in the academy and practice.”
Gurumurthy Kalyanaram (GK), a fellow academic, observes, “Wagner’s curiosity and ebullience flowed over to his scholarship, which was deep but also very eclectic. From conceptual to technical, the range of subjects of curiosity and inquiry were phenomenal: Customer relationship management, segmentation, life cycles and lifestyles, latent class models, modeling heterogeneity and preference. Wagner was a renaissance man.”That Wagner was a renaissance man is effusively endorsed by Rex Du who describes Wagner’s philosophy thus, “Wagner’s academic philosophy echoed that of Michelangelo, whom he admired: just as the sculptor chips away marble to reveal form, Wagner believed the scholar must hone the ability to impose structure without distortion, to extract signal without fabricating noise.” Rex Du is the Shelby H. Carter Jr. and Patricia Carter Regents Professor in Global Business Marketing at The University of Texas at Austin and is a doctoral student of Wagner.
Rex goes on to describe Wagner’s prolific and profound contributions. “Among Wagner’s many significant and enduring contributions to marketing research, his application and advancement of factor-analytic methods across diverse marketing domains stand out for their methodological innovation, managerial relevance, and practical applicability. He extended traditional factor analysis frameworks to accommodate mixed data types—such as binary, count, ordinal, and continuous variables—enabling marketing researchers to better model the high-dimensional dependencies commonly encountered in real-world applications. For instance, Wagner tackled the persistent challenge of missing data in marketing research by integrating data imputation within factor analysis. His development of a mixed-data factor analyzer also enhanced cross-selling predictions by combining customer database information with survey data, providing marketers with actionable insights for personalized targeting. Furthermore, through the introduction of structural dynamic factor analysis, Wagner advanced marketing intelligence applications in areas such as quantitative trendspotting and repeated cross-sectional tracking studies.
The core principles that Wagner’s intellectual output were rigor and relevance. Michel calls it “engineering approach to solving marketing problems.” Gary: “practical tools for decision makers.” Rex recollects this counsel from Wagner: “He often reminded me that I must always ensure my work represents “marketing science rather than marketing science fiction.” That simple yet profound mantra exemplifies the rigor and clarity he brought to every facet of scholarship.”
Wagner was generous to a fault. He was a mentor and guide. He was always there for his colleagues and students. Michel has this to say, “Together, we worked on a wide range of topics, but one of the highlights in my career was the book we jointly wrote on market segmentation. I learned a lot from working with him, not only about methods, models, and programming, but also on how to pick relevant and interesting topics to work on.” Gary recollects this, “And, at work at Vanderbilt, Wagner, Terry Elrod and I were a raucous group of assistant professors interested in marketing science. Argumentation was our approach to research. One notable seminar included Terry taking off his shoe, pounding it on the table, and telling Wagner that he was just plain wrong! My research style with Wagner was similar. He would come up with some wild idea. I would tell him his idea was wrong and could never work. Having stated our positions, we would argue for days. This process led to great research papers. Two of my most cited papers were written with Wagner. Another paper with Wagner won a best paper award from Journal of Retailing.” And then Carl: “Wagner was a phenomenal colleague with a unique blend of methods and practice. In addition to being a remarkable resource whose measurement knowledge was world-class, he had deep industry connections making him an invaluable resource for understanding how industries applied marketing measurement.”
Rex and Wagner exchanged notes around Thanksgiving of 2024 and that exchange has produced this poignant narration. “My last email exchanges with Wagner were this past Thanksgiving. I feel fortunate to have had the chance to express my lasting gratitude to him before his passing. He was, as always, full of wisdom. One line that will stay with me: "That's the way the system works: you are mentored as a young scholar and then pay forward mentoring others, and everyone benefits from it! This way, you keep up to date with the field and take advantage of your experience, along with the new energy from the students.”
Wagner’s impact on the marketing science is institutionalized through his remarkably innovative reforms to Journal of Marketing Research as its Editor-in-Chief. Listen to Carl’s fulsome description. “Wagner was an energetic editor at JMR. Many may not realize that he instigated electronic review, which was hitherto mail-based. He also used the reviewers’ self-stated areas of expertise to create a joint space of reviewer expertise where distance reflected similarity in research interests. He used this joint space to determine which reviewers were close to authors and which reviewers were close to recommended authors. It’s a fine example of bringing measurement to practice. His research philosophy, as stated in his initial JMR editorial, remains an exceptional statement of his values, “When designing experiments to test their theories, authors must be mindful of not only internal validity but also external validity and the generalizability of their results and conclusions. When collecting data through surveys, authors must be mindful of typical problems in survey research, such as halo effects, order effects, common-methods biases, and so forth. For the sophisticated JMR reader, it is not enough that the results are statistically significant; it is incumbent on authors to demonstrate that the effects obtained are sizable enough to be of any practical relevance. In a similar vein, authors proposing new methodology should be able to show the incremental value of their technique over current marketing research practice through comparisons, holdout predictions, analysis of synthetic data, cross-validation, and so on.””
That Wagner was a renaissance man is not only borne out by his eclectic intellectual output in marketing and strategy but his passion for music and his sense of humor.
Here is the recitation on Wagner’s love for music from Wagner’s family. “Wagner studied piano, and developed a passion for all sorts of music, ranging from the classical compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach, the contemporary Brazilian stylings of Tom Jobim, to the eclectic rock stylings of the Beatles. He also developed his talent as a performer, learning to play the trumpet and eventually becoming the youngest player in his city’s municipal band. In high school, he and a group of friends created a rock band "Os Vibrantes" (The Vibrations) that was very successful in playing at balls and dance halls on weekends. He truly enjoyed his time with his band, and the friendships and community he cultivated with his bandmates lasted an entire lifetime.”
Gary was a witness to Wagner’s love for music. Wagner even managed to illustrate a mixture model with Beatles lyric and music. “We have a shared love of music. He learned to play keyboards “by ear” and was in a band during his student days. Later, he assembled a database on chord sequences of Beatles songs. It is well-known that the Beatles changed their style of music in the later part of their career. Wagner used his knowledge of mixture models and the chord sequence database to show that Beatle songs really do fall into two time periods, early and late. While working at Rice University, he returned to University of Iowa to present this work at a research seminar. I remember that he played excerpts from different Beatle songs to illustrate his mixture model solution. The differences in music style are striking. After the trip, he sent me the audio files of all the songs in his research article. I still have them on my compute drive.”
Of Wagner’s humor, Michel recollects this: “One of the funniest stories that Wagner liked to share was the following. One day when working together at Vanderbilt, Wagner said that Cissa was going to make Japanese food for us. We went across the street to pick up ingredients from a Japanese store. When we walked into the store, the owner made a phone call, and within a short amount of time, many of his family and friends showed up and asked me for autographs. Wagner was flabbergasted. He asked me if marketing professors were famous in the Netherlands. However, I just ended my career as a Karate competitor and became well-known in Japan. Wagner really enjoyed telling this story.”
Listen to Carl’s recollection of Wagner’s wit. “Speaking of Wagner’s wit, those who know him will remember how he could break up a room. One of his favorite stories involved his son, Daniel. When Daniel turned 16 and learned to drive, he wanted a new car. He spoke to Cissa and Wagner and shared research that the chances of a driving accident increased with more teens in the car and Wagner was impressed with the research. With Wagner and Cissa in agreement about the need to limit the number of teens, Daniel next proposed his parents buy him a two-seat convertible! Wagner approached every endeavor with humor. When discussing political differences, he would always do so with a laugh. In fact, even when Wagner was upset, he was happy (in the sense he had a smile and a witty retort).”
The community misses a scholar whose love for all that is ennobling was so evident. Michel: “I have so many happy memories of the times with Wagner. He was brilliant, creative, warm, and funny. I will greatly miss talking to him about work, family, music, politics, and much more. I will remember the time I spent with Wagner and Cissa with great fondness and much gratitude for the rest of my life.” Gary: “He was a great guy – and he had a major influence on my life. I will miss him.” GK: “Wagner was larger than life in his warmth and kindness, in his scholarship and mentorship, and in his love for all things beautiful.”
Gurumurthy Kalyanaram
November 2025