Faculty Directory A to Z

• Dr. Gupta’s research primarily explores the role of market-mediated meanings in consumers’ lives, and how these meanings are shaped by culture. She applies perspectives from the disciplines of consumer psychology and consumer culture theory (CCT) in her research.
• Focus areas: Branding, Culture, Gender, Linguistics.
• Substantive: Brand communications, Visual design, Judgment and decision making, Indian consumers.
• Methodological: Experiments, Qualitative methods (netnography, phenomenological interviews, discourse analysis, semiotics), Text analytics.

• Gupta, Tanvi, and Henrik Hagtvedt (2021), “Safe Together, Vulnerable Apart: How Interstitial Space in Text Logos Impacts Brand Attitudes in Tight Versus Loose Cultures.” Journal of Consumer Research, 48(3), 474-491. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucab006 (UTD 24, FT 50)
• Anand, Jayeti, Tanvi Gupta, Srinivas Pingali and Kiran Pedada (2022), “Chetak: Revitalizing a Legacy Brand from the Past to the Future (Bajaj Auto Ltd.)”. Harvard Business Review, Case. https://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/ISB328-PDF-ENG
• Gupta, Tanvi and Adishri Guha (2023), Rangbhoomi: The Digital Heartlands of India, Consumer Culture Lab Report. https://cclab.iimu.ac.in/digital-heartlands-report-2023
• Gupta, Tanvi, Shirley Chen, and Smaraki Mohanty (2024), "More the merrier: Effects of plural brand names on perceived entitativity and brand attitude." Journal of Consumer Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.1409 (FT 50)

• Prior to her PhD, Dr. Gupta has worked with the marketing research industry with multiple brands, spanning both quantitative and qualitative research methods. During her stint at Kantar (2011-2014), she has worked on cultural analysis, concept testing, product testing, brand tracking, equity and advertisement pre-tests. She has hands-on experience with methods including semiotics, focus groups, depth interviews, surveys, eye-tracking and facial-coding.
• Selected list of brands handled: ITC Foods, Unilever, PepsiCo, Diageo, Tata Global Beverages, Amazon, Johnson & Johnson, and Nissan Motors.

• 2021 - Bala and Vasantha Balachandran Research Grant 2021 at North American Society for Marketing Education in India (NASMEI) (Grant INR 1,00,000).
• 2021 - Distinguished Consortium Faculty Member, 9th AIM-AMA Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium 2021.
• 2018 - ACR Sheth Foundation Dissertation Award, Cross-cultural track, Dallas, Texas (Grant: $ 2,300).
• 2018 - ACR Doctoral Consortium Winner, CCT Track Shark Tank, Dallas, Texas.
• 2018 - Department representative, 7th AIM-AMA Sheth Doctoral Consortium, Ahmedabad, India.
• 2013 - Global Award for Client Impact, Asia-Pacific Region, Millward Brown.
• 2011 - Gold Medal, Director’s Award for Academic Excellence, PGPCM, MICA, Ahmedabad, India.
• 2011 - Best Dissertation Award, MICA, Ahmedabad, India.
• 2010 - Country representative, Future Talent Meets Industry, ESOMAR Asia-Pacific Conference, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
• 2009 - University Rank III, B.B.M., Bangalore University.

• Co-chair, Consumer Culture Lab, IIM Udaipur www.cclab.iimu.ac.in.
• Editorial Review Board member, Journal of Retailing
• Co-leader, GENMAC virtual research group.

• Marketing Research (MBA core).
• Consumer Behaviour (PhD seminar course).
• Consumer Culture Theory (PhD seminar course).
• Consumer Behaviour (MBA Elective).
• Cultural Branding and Marketing Semiotics, Guest lecture to a group of start-ups at the Incubation Centre of IIM Udaipur.

Dr. Gupta is a practicing marketing semiotician with over a decade of experience with this method. She offers semiotics consulting services for brands seeking to understand facets of Indian consumer culture.

These projects involve analyzing a corpus of texts - Instagram posts, blogs, YouTube videos, ads, packaging, movies to identify structures and their underlying cultural codes. Some semiotics projects that Dr Gupta has worked on include:

• Decoding the emotional space of early motherhood in India for a toy brand by analyzing the communications discourse of over 50 brands and social media content of mom-fluencers on Instagram.
• Understanding the dominant and emergent design principles of India to uncover what “design” means in the Indian culture with implications for product designers catering to Indian consumers.
• Emergent food trends in India: analyzed over 700 Instagram posts of food bloggers.
• Decoding emergent codes of beauty in India and the corresponding ideologies of haircare: analyzed over 800 posts by beauty bloggers and 200 ads by beauty brands in India.
• Understanding types of mother-daughter relationships through narrative analysis of over 200 advertisements.
• Decoding the cultural differences between north vs. south India - to understand why ads that do well in north do not work in south. This project involved analysis of ads, local products, popular media (cinema and TV), and anthropological literature.
• Decoding the meaning of “craft” in the beer category. This involved a semiotic brand audit of multiple craft beer brands across the world.
• Understanding the meaning of “snacking” among lower-class Indian consumers. This involved the sensorial decoding of over 100 local snack foods available across the country.
• Embodied meanings emerging from packaging and logo design - visual and sensorial semiotics applied to decode packaging and logos for various food and beverage brands.
• Color meanings in UX design - decoded cultural meanings associated with different product categories and applied color psychology for an online retail brand.