Rate My Professor Gary Hunter

Gary Hunter is a Professor of Marketing in the Department of Marketing at Illinois State University’s College of Business. He has served as Interim Chairperson of the department and as Internship Coordinator for marketing programs, including Professional Sales and Advanced Marketing Analytics. Hunter is also a Research Fellow at the Katie School of Insurance. His research centers on consumer behavior and retailing, with investigations into how digital transformations, crowdsourcing, and information overload influence consumers, intermediaries, and sales performance. He examines topics such as consumer empowerment through internet information, loyalty in e-CRM software and e-services, anticipated emotions driving shopping center visits, brand equity in financial services, and value propositions in digitally transformed environments. Hunter has explored peer networking among artisan entrepreneurs, competition from informal firms on new product development, and showrooming effects using service-dominant logic and value co-creation, exemplified in cases involving Best Buy.

Hunter’s scholarship appears in leading journals, including the Journal of Consumer Research, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Services Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management, and Journal of Marketing Education. Key publications include “Consumers’ need for uniqueness: scale development and validation” (2001, cited over 2,900 times), “The internet, information and empowerment” (2006), “An exploratory investigation into the antecedents of satisfaction, brand attitude, and loyalty within the (B2B) eCRM industry” (2003), “The role of anticipated emotion, desire, and intention in the relationship between image and shopping center visits” (2006), “Understanding (customer-based) brand equity in financial services” (2007), “Student engagement and marketing classes” (2011), and “Value propositions in a digitally transformed world” (2020). His work has accumulated over 5,200 citations on Google Scholar. Hunter contributes to student development through sales analytics awards and corporate partnerships with IBM and Best Buy for marketing education at Illinois State University.