Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Donna L. Hoffman
Professor of Marketing,
Louis Rosenfeld Distinguished Scholar,
GW School of Business,
George Washington University
Donna Hoffman is a world-renowned expert in online consumer experience and behavior, including how consumers react to information and disclosures in digital and online settings. Professor Hoffman is also a leading scholar on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) on consumer perceptions and behavior. She has extensive experience with survey methods and content analysis.
Professor Hoffman has testified in multiple matters, including in two federal trials. Her testimony in these matters included evaluating and opining on issues relating to online consumer behavior, digital marketing, and the role of internet search in the purchase decision process. Professor Hoffman has also applied her expertise to evaluate allegations of dark patterns in online user interfaces and their influence on user perceptions, decisions, and behavior. Some of her work in these contexts has involved data privacy issues.
Professor Hoffman cofounded and codirects the Center for the Connected Consumer, an academic research center dedicated to understanding consumer experiences with AI and smart devices that are connected to the internet.
Professor Hoffman’s research has appeared in top academic and managerial publications, such as Marketing Science, Management Science, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Consumer Research, and the Journal of Consumer Psychology. She currently serves on the editorial boards of leading academic publications in the marketing discipline, as well as serving as an associate editor at the Journal of Marketing. She coedited the book Beyond the Basics: Research-Based Rules for Internet Retailing Advantage and has coauthored numerous book chapters focused on consumer behavior in online environments.
One of the most highly cited scholars in the marketing field, Professor Hoffman has received many prestigious research awards. These include the Society for Consumer Psychology Fellow Award; the Robert B. Clarke Educator of the Year Award from Marketing EDGE (formerly the DMEF); the Sheth Foundation/Journal of Marketing Award for long-term contributions to the marketing discipline; and the William O’Dell/Journal of Marketing Research Award for long-term research impact.
Professor Hoffman has consulted to major corporations on electronic commerce and digital marketing strategy, including FedEx.com, Intel, Lands’ End/Sears, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, and Walmart.com. She also served as a member of the Procter & Gamble Digital Advisory Board.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Kevin Lane Keller
E. B. Osborn Professor of Marketing,
Tuck School of Business,
Dartmouth College
Kevin Lane Keller’s expertise lies in branding and marketing management. His specific research interest is how theories and concepts related to consumer behavior can improve marketing strategies.
Professor Keller has consulted to some of the world’s most successful brands, including Accenture, American Express, Disney, Ford, Intel, Levi Strauss, L.L.Bean, Nike, Procter & Gamble, and Samsung. He has served as an expert witness in consumer class actions, and matters involving exclusionary practices, brand valuation, and trade secrets.
Professor Keller is an authority on building, measuring, and managing brand equity strategies. His textbook Strategic Brand Management has been adopted at leading business schools and firms. He is also coauthor with Philip Kotler of the all-time best-selling introductory MBA marketing textbook, Marketing Management.
His research has been published in all four of the major marketing journals—the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, and Marketing Science. With over one hundred published papers, Professor Keller’s research is widely cited and has received numerous awards. A highly sought-after speaker, he has made keynote speeches and conducted marketing seminars to top executives all over the world.
Previously, Professor Keller was on the faculty at Stanford University, where he also served as the head of the marketing group. He has been on the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a visiting professor at Duke University and the Australian Graduate School of Management.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Ravi Dhar
George Rogers Clark Professor of Management and Marketing,
Director, Center for Customer Insights,
Yale School of Management;
Professor of Psychology, Yale University
Ravi Dhar is involved in pioneering work in understanding the different factors that influence how consumers think and decide. He has provided expert testimony in numerous trials and depositions, including cases involving surveys related to consumer behavior, allegations of defective products, trademark infringement, and the likelihood of product confusion.
Professor Dhar has also served as a consultant to dozens of Fortune 500 companies in a variety of industries, among them financial services, healthcare, high tech, and luxury goods. He consults on developing best practices for generating and using customer insights.
Professor Dhar has published more than sixty articles and serves on the editorial boards of several leading marketing journals. The American Marketing Association recently ranked Professor Dhar as the most productive scholar publishing in premier marketing journals from 2009 through 2013.
His research and teaching have been honored with various awards, including the Distinguished Scientific Accomplishment Award of the Society for Consumer Psychology, the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Management, and the Yale School of Management Alumni Association Teaching Award. His work is frequently mentioned in Businessweek, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, USA Today, and other media
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Victoria Stodden
Associate Professor,
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering,
University of Southern California
Victoria Stodden is an internationally recognized statistician and data scientist. Professor Stodden analyzes the reliability of scientific results, particularly in the context of sophisticated computational approaches to research. Her expertise includes statistical sampling and statistical data analyses, big data methods, the design and implementation of scientific validation systems, and openness standards for data and code sharing.
As part of her work to make data applications more transparent and verifiable, Professor Stodden developed the “Reproducible Research Standard,” a suite of open licensing recommendations for disseminating computational results. While at Yale Law School, she won the Kaltura Prize for Access to Knowledge for her research on legal issues in reproducible research and scientific innovation.
Professor Stodden has testified on scientific reproducibility before the Congressional House Committee on Science, Space & Technology and co-chaired the National Science Foundation’s Advisory Committee for Cyberinfrastructure. She has been a member of the National Science Foundation’s Advisory Committee for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate. She has also served on several National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine committees.
Professor Stodden has published more than fifty papers in academic journals and conference proceedings, and co-edited two books: Privacy, Big Data, and the Public Good: Frameworks for Engagement, and Implementing Reproducible Research. She has served as associate editor for the Harvard Data Science Review, the Annals of Applied Statistics, and on the editorial advisory boards of a number of other statistics and data science journals.
Before joining USC, Professor Stodden held visiting and permanent faculty positions at the University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she received tenure. She was a Kauffman Fellow in Law and Innovation at Yale Law School and a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
Professor Stodden holds a Ph.D. in statistics and a law degree from Stanford University. She teaches courses in data science, statistical theory, quantitative methods, and machine learning, among other topics.
Consumer Fraud and Product Liability Capabilities
Cornerstone Research has addressed issues of certification, exposure, reliance, impact, and damages in class actions. Key questions in these cases may include whether common evidence can prove that certain challenged conduct caused each member of the proposed class to make a purchase and whether the challenged conduct injured each member of the proposed class. An additional consideration is whether each proposed class member’s damages, if any, can be determined by common proof. We have worked on class actions involving allegations of:
- The benefit of the bargain harm, where plaintiffs claim that consumers would have allegedly paid less or not purchased the product at issue had they not allegedly been misled or had defendants not acted in in bad faith, because of improper labeling, advertising, or disclosure
- Diminished resale value of a durable good due to the challenged conduct
- Demand and price inflation claims that plaintiffs argue caused class-wide impact, even for consumers who were not influenced by the challenged conduct
Class certification in these cases frequently turns on the particulars of the challenged conduct, the overall structure of the industry and the market, and the characteristics of individual transactions. We evaluate these issues through empirical research within a framework of sound economic concepts.
Individual actions involving allegations of fraud and misrepresentation are often brought by a defendant’s competitors. These cases may require a focus on the relevant market, quantification of the effect of the challenged conduct on demand and prices for competing products, and estimation of damages suffered by competitors due to the defendant’s alleged fraud or misrepresentation.
In addition to lost sales and price erosion, some plaintiffs may also seek reputational damages and punitive damages. We have substantial experience analyzing these specific types of claims, applying our expertise in economics, marketing, finance, econometrics, and accounting.
Our experience in individual actions includes allegations of fraud and misrepresentation in matters involving a broad array of industries and consumer products.
Cornerstone Research staff and experts have significant experience in survey design, including analyzing and implementing reliable sampling techniques. We regularly conduct and critique surveys of market participants to assess consumer behavior, attitudes, and preferences, and to address issues relating to exposure, reliance, and materiality. In some cases, we supplemented these empirical findings with analysis of data originally collected over the course of business as well as from publicly available data sources.
Cornerstone Research regularly formulates and implements empirical analyses to respond to economic and financial issues. We have specialized staff with expertise in advanced modeling and statistical techniques, including difference-in-differences, hedonic regression, and synthetic control methods, among others. We frequently use real-world, large datasets with sophisticated statistical and econometric methods.
We have experience working with experts to develop and implement rigorous, state-of-the-art content analysis techniques—including artificial intelligence and machine learning—to assess marketing messages (such as advertisements), social media and user-generated online content, and other content involving extensive textual data, such as public press spanning many years.
Conjoint analysis is a survey-based marketing research tool developed by academics to understand and estimate consumer preferences. It has been adopted by businesses and industry practitioners to help make decisions on new product development and market segmentation analysis, among other uses. Over the last several years, conjoint analysis has been increasingly proposed as a method to estimate class-wide damages in a variety of consumer class actions including product liability, false advertising, product labeling, and data privacy and data breach matters. However, the technique’s underlying assumptions and limitations render it unsuitable for calculating damages in a class action setting.
Automobile
Cornerstone Research has rich experience in analyzing causation, impact, and damages issues in the automobile industry. We have addressed allegations of benefit of the bargain harm and diminished resale value in these cases.
Consumer Finance
We have worked on consumer finance cases involving credit cards, checking accounts, and pension plan choices. Our experience encompasses fraud and misrepresentation allegations as well as deceptive advertising and inadequate disclosure claims.
Food, Beverage, and Dietary Supplements
In the food, beverage, and dietary supplements industries, Cornerstone Research has applied economic and statistical methods and marketing research techniques such as surveys to cases involving allegations of false advertising, omissions of material information, and product misrepresentation. We have worked on matters involving “All Natural” claims on product labels, health-related claims on product packaging and advertising, the amount of “slack-fill” in product packaging, the amounts of ingredients included in a product, and comparative advertising between competing products, among others.
Life Sciences and Healthcare
We have worked on several cases involving allegations of fraud and misrepresentation in life sciences and healthcare matters.
Technology
In several technology and manufacturing cases, attorneys have retained Cornerstone Research to analyze issues related to alleged false advertising, deception, product liability, and demand and price inflation.
Other Consumer Products
Our staff have assessed allegations of false advertising, deception, and product liability in many consumer products.
Data Privacy and Data Breach
Cornerstone Research has experience in high-profile data privacy and data breach matters, addressing a wide range of damages methodologies and analyses commonly used by plaintiffs in class actions in the United States.
Our experience covers all stages of litigation, including pre-litigation assessment of exposure, support for mediation, and expert testimony support at the class certification and merits phases. We also have substantial experience assisting clients in regulatory proceedings relating to data privacy or data breach issues in the United States and Europe.
Featured Cases
Selected Professionals
Our staff consultants contribute expertise in economics, finance, accounting, and marketing, as well as business acumen, familiarity with the litigation process, and a commitment to provide outstanding support.
Featured Publications
How can we help you?
For more information or assistance with a specific matter, please contact us.