Tygarajan Somasundaram

soma@sandiego.edu
(619) 260-4889
Olin Hall 322

Associate Professor of Marketing

Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Marketing
MBA University of Saskatchewan, Canada, Marketing
MBA Panjab University, India, Marketing and Finance
B.A. University of Delhi, India, Economics (Honors) and Mathematics

http://home.sandiego.edu/~soma/

Tyagarajan Somasundaram (Soma) joined the Marketing faculty in the School of Business Administration in 1988. Recently, he completed a course on Managing Brand Meanings at the Harvard Business School. Professor Somasundaram is active in consulting with tele-communication, semiconductor capital equipment, automotive and consumer packaged goods companies. His most recent consulting engagements were with Eli Lilly (www.lilly.com), Flextronics (www.flextronics.com), Nokia (www.nokia.com) and Cymer Inc (www.cymer.com). For Nokia, Professor Somasundaram presented to the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President (CDMA) the results of his investigation into rapid developments in "middleware" and the strategic implications of wireless handset evolution into "thin clients". Somasundaram also studied for Flextronics the functional capabilities required in Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and wireless Smartphones over the next five years. He led a team that developed a technology roadmap for wireless data enabled devices that would have to be developed by Palm (www.palm.com), Motorola (www.motorola.com), Kyocera (www.kyocera-wireless.com), SONY-Ericsson (www.palm.com), Motorola (www.motorola.com), Kyocera (www.sonyericsson.com) and Hewlett-Packard (www.hp.com) by integrating their product design and manufacturing strategies with ODMs (Acer, Leo, HTC, Legend) in China, Taiwan and Korea.

Somasundaram teaches Marketing Management and Consumer Behavior courses in USD's School of Business Administration. Recently he taught a course on Strategic Alliances and Technology Transfer in Emerging Markets in Beijing and Shanghai. His academic interests are brand valuation and brand equity, consumer satisfaction and the role of warranties and other cues on perceptions of product quality. Prior to enrolling in the Ph.D. program, Somasundaram held brand management and field sales management positions in India and Nigeria.