Donnie Lichtenstein is one of Pete’s senior colleagues at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business. He attended the University of Alabama for his undergraduate degree in Marketing and received his PhD from the University of South Carolina. He was an assistant professor at LSU prior to joining CU, where he has been since. He has taught a wide array of classes and has served as both the chair of the marketing division and in the School’s Dean’s office. His main area of research interest is behavioral pricing, and in 2004 we recognized with the Fordham Lifetime Achievement Award in Behavioral Pricing Research.
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Listen to Episode #61 here
Getting A Good Deal with Donnie Lichtenstein
Our guest is Donnie Lichtenstein. He’s one of my senior colleagues at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business. He attended the University of Alabama for his undergraduate degree in marketing and received his PhD from the University of South Carolina. He was an assistant professor at LSU prior to joining CU where he has been since. He’s taught a wide array of classes and has served as both the Chairman of the Marketing Division and in the school’s Dean’s office. His main area of research is behavioral pricing and in 2004, he was recognized with the Fordham Lifetime Achievement Award in Behavioral Pricing Research. Welcome, Donnie.
Thank you.
If you weren’t working as a marketing professor, what would you be doing?
I would be a political pundit.
On Twitter, you do make some comments.
I follow politics, yes.
You don’t talk about it in the office though.
I’m not that politically active. I watch politics all the time. I watch political pundits on CNN. I watch political reports. That’s hard work. Political pundits sit back and people ask them for their opinions. I want to be paid to sit back and have people ask me my opinions.
Politically, things are pretty charged nowadays. Do you find the theater more like interesting and entertaining or do you find it more upsetting or both?
Until 2016, I found it entertaining. I’m not politically active. I like the strategy, the positioning and the gamesmanship in politics. 2016 changed things and there are no rules anymore. Everything I thought about the way our government worked is thrown out the window.
[bctt tweet=”Have a positive effect on those people around you.” username=””]
You’re actually back down in the Dean’s Office these days.
I’m filling in for six months while our real associate dean is on sabbatical. I’m hanging in there for six months until he gets back.
How’s that going? I haven’t noticed a change.
If I grade me, I will give myself a good grade. If I don’t ask other people, but it seems that way.
You’re down at the Dean’s Office temporarily.
Correct.
You’re teaching an intro to marketing course these days.
I teach the Introduction to Marketing course and about a year ago, they asked me to teach a PhD seminar outside my area, to say the least, in marketing strategy.
How’s that going? Tell the audience what it means to teach a PhD seminar in marketing strategy.
When you teach a PhD seminar, you’re teaching PhD students about the research in an area. Typically, faculty teaches PhD seminars in areas where they conduct research. They’ve published in the area. They’ve had a lot of insights and made contributions in that area.
I teach the judgment decision making seminar here. One of the nice things about it is I get to assign my own papers at times. That’s an easy class to teach.
It’s good for the students. The students benefit from having people who have published in the area and have insights in the area teach the class. We didn’t have anybody in marketing strategy. There was a group of faculties here, one is John Lynch. He’d voluntold me to teach a PhD seminar in marketing strategy. I didn’t have the background and the literature. It was very good for me because I’m learning right alongside the students. I borrowed syllabi from people who were experts in the area and got a lot of help.
One thing I noticed that you did, which has inspired me with my courses, you brought in some of these elite teachers to do a guest session.
I offered to fly them in and put them up. They signed the papers ahead of time. I’m like one of the students in the class reading the papers and having the guest lecturer lead the seminar. It’s good for the students, especially, given my lack of background in the area. The second time I’ll teach the course I’ll have a lot more idea about what I’m doing.
That’s always the case, even teaching an undergraduate course. I did something slightly different. I used Skype video calls. I would assign a paper and invite the expert to come in. One of the things I did was I had some of our alums. I had some of our Ph.D. students who have graduated. It’s good for the students to see where they could be in ten years.
Two of the three people I invited in got sick or had conflicts. I ended up Skyping in two of the three. I’m teaching in the spring again. I’ll invite three more in.
You’re still active in research. What is behavioral pricing? How does one win a Lifetime Achievement Award for their contributions?
The first question, what is behavioral pricing research? When consumers encounter price, they base on a bunch of contextual factors and background factors, they’ll perceive that price either favorably or unfavorably given the format the prices in. Is it in deal form or not in deal form? What other products do they compare that price to in deciding if it’s a good deal or not a good deal? Our background factors, are the consumers deal prone or are they not deal prone? What makes them deal prone? When consumers see the price, do they infer quality? Do they infer quality from it all the time? Are there factors that, say for these types of product categories I think higher price means higher quality? For these types, I don’t. How much does a consumer likely to rely on a price to indicate quality in the presence of a strong brand name or a weak brand name? It’s those types of questions. How does one win a Lifetime Achievement Award? You pick a very narrow area where there are not many other people doing research, which I did. You become one of the earlier people in it and you get lucky. There are awards that are big-time general awards. If you go to ACR and you’re a fellow, that’s a lot of people to choose from.
That’s the Association for Consumer Research. A couple of thousand people go to the conference and there’s probably twice as many research easily.
If you get recognized that way, that’s huge. In behavioral pricing research, there’s me and my friends and if you get that award, it’s nice. I’ve never gotten it. I’ve kept it in perspective.
[bctt tweet=”The love you take is equal to the love you make.” username=””]
I want to ask you about behavioral pricing specifically. One is you seem like the guy who studies what he cares about. You seem like a guy who’s deal-prone, deal-focused.
The thing is I love a deal. Even if it’s a fictitious deal, it catches my attention and I have to physically pull myself away. I go, “That’s not a good deal. They’re trying to make you think it is.” It’s like it’s in your blood. It’s like knowledge doesn’t protect you, knowledge is not a defense for things that are innate in you.
In general, people are deal-prone because we’re sensitive to reference points. Naturally, one of the things that the work that you do talks about this idea of transaction utility. You get a good feeling from getting a deal, your emotions are involved. In general, people have that. Why are you very high on those?
Where does it come from? Many years ago, I did this study that never went anywhere. It was rejected by all the top journals and even some that weren’t so top. I looked at relationships. I did surveys of parent’s perception, deal perceptions, perceptions of price, quality of relationships and I had them paired with their kids to see if there was a correlation between parents and the kids. It didn’t find it too much. It’s probably why it didn’t go anywhere. I’ve often answered that question, where does it come from? Why do I care about getting a deal more than the next person? That’s such a great question because I don’t have the answer to it. I remember my dad liked clipping coupons and I said, “Am I more prone to like clipping coupons because my dad did?” That was what got me going in that area of research. I didn’t find that strong relationship between parents and their kids being deal-prone. I don’t have a good answer, but it’s something I’ve thought about before.
I want to ask you about this because I can certainly imagine and I had this happen to myself. I came from a pretty modest background. I was making my way on my own very early in life. I remember at one point when I was a graduate student, this simple living movement bubbled up to the surface. There were a bunch of books about it and so on. I went to the library to get books. I remember eager to find out the secrets to squeezing more life out of my modest income. I read the books, I was like, “They’re missing a whole bunch of good ways to make their way.” I had already naturally found all those opportunities, but then now, money is less of concern obviously. I have a steady paycheck. I’ve had to at times work to unlearn those tendencies. I have found it difficult to do because you spend 30, 40 years of your life learning behaviors and perspectives and trying to unlearn those is hard. I’m curious because you’re in the same position as I am. You’ve got a steady paycheck. You don’t need deals.
I had this conversation not long ago. I was on the highway and there was traffic. You can avoid the traffic by going on the toll road. It’s going to cost you $0.75 or something like that. $0.75 is nothing but the idea of paying to drive in a different lane is alien to me. You’re so right about trying to unlearn. I grew up very middle class and didn’t have that many of the extras. I’m not poor-mouthing. I always had what I needed. I spend $0.75 easily all the time, but to drive in the lane that seemed alien to me. I catch myself, “It’s $0.75. You’ll never miss $0.75.” I hear what you’re saying and I agree with you totally.
It’s difficult to study obviously, but I have found it difficult myself to let go of some of those behaviors, especially when they hold me back. For example, you’re driving down to Denver in the morning. Let me give you a pro tip. If you’re going to use any of those toll lanes, use the final one getting into Denver because it may cost you $3, $4, $5. I-25 at 6:30, 7:00 in the morning can be a parking lot.
I thought you were going to say $0.75 and I was going to go back to my office and figure out if it was worth it or not. If it’s $3, I can tell you right now I’m going to sit in traffic.
What if I gave you the $3?
I’ll put $3 in my pocket. I’ll sit in traffic.
You’re a lot worse at overcoming this tendency than I am.
I am cheap.
How many rolls of toilet paper do you have in your basement?
I wasn’t too bad on the toilet tissue. I go to Costco and get the mega pack. I’m living alone with no women around, that can last a year.
You’re not cheap from top to bottom. For example, you have dogs. A truly cheap person would never have a dog.
Moreover, their dog food costs more than my food.
You have three dogs.
I have two dogs now. The truth is if I see a piece of furniture I like or something and it’s very expensive, I buy it. I’m very quality-conscious. I look at what I’m giving up and what I’m getting. I don’t throw money freely, but if it’s something high-end and I want it, I’ll get it. I don’t do it without thought.
You’re a big dog guy. Where did that come from?
I had dogs as a kid and didn’t bond with, didn’t think about that much. In the late ‘90s, I got a dog and bonded with, it’s been over twenty years. It’s almost like, “Eureka, I get it. All these people who are dog people, now I understand what a dog does for you. I had two dogs. I had three dogs. When I come to retire, I’ll probably have more. I have two right now, but they’re such a good company.
[bctt tweet=”Grit is the new conscientiousness.” username=””]
I like to describe them as love machines.
They are always wanting your attention and always affectionate.
I had a dog as a kid, but I haven’t had a dog as an adult. I’m a little more mobile than you are.
We’re probably toward endpoints on that. I’m a homebody. As I’ve gotten older, I had turned into such a homebody and part of the reason I don’t want to travel is the dogs. It’s not I got my lifestyle changed down and I said, “I can get dogs now.” It’s like I’ve got dogs and I say, “I want to be home with my dogs.” I was talking to someone and I said, “That’s more of Pete’s style,” because you seemed to travel and go in location A and work with somebody, location B and work with somebody. I’m too much of a homebody.
I know abstractly the value that a dog would provide in terms of affection and purpose, but I don’t think it would be fair to the dog. I like having a good home base. A good place to come home to and to be productive, and to be healthy. One of the things that I thought was fascinating was I met this researcher. I was doing this thing about laughter. I don’t know why they invited this guy, but he does research on petting. One of the findings is that when a person pets a dog, the dog has an endorphin release. It’s pleasurable for a dog to be petted. It’s why they seek it out. What’s interesting is the person petting the dog also has an endorphin release. An evolutionary belief is that it’s connected in some way to grooming. The way primates groom each other and that both the groomer and the groomie have a pleasurable response to this thing.
I believe that because I get pleasure and the dog gets a lot of pleasure.
You’ll see people walking down the street with a dog and someone will walk up and start petting this dog out of nowhere. I always saw it like, “Where does that come from? It’s not even your own dog.” That was enlightening.
I love all animals and their innocence and they rely on us for about everything. Even the ones that don’t rely on us, if they are animals in the wild, they’re trusting and open. There’s a lot of nice quality.
I want to wrap up the pricing stuff. You had mentioned something about how in some categories, price suggests quality and in other categories, it doesn’t. What does it predict whether something’s one of those categories or another?
I looked at that many years ago. As a generalization, it tends to be the case that price relates more strongly to quality for non-durables, paper towels, dishwashing liquids, things of that nature than it does to the durable product category. In the durable product category, you say, “What is it?” That’s a very tricky question because what I found is that if I look and track over time within a durable product category, at one point in time, there will be a positive price quality of relationship in a product category. Years later, it might be zero or negative to the higher the price, the worst the quality. There are a lot of product categories that fall into that. Consumers generally ask, “Will I get more if I pay more?” That looks at the correlation between zero, no relationship between price and quality, and a positive relationship. People don’t open up the other end of the scale and initially, that is it the case that if I pay more, I’ll get worse quality. There have been many product categories where the relationship between pricing true quality is negative.
What would be an example of that?
It changes over time. I’d have to go back and look because it’s not stable, but there’ve been many studies. I did one back in the late ‘80s looking at the right price and quality. I did one with two of our other colleagues, Bart de Langhe and Phil Fernbach in 2016 where we looked at the distribution of price and quality across product categories and maybe 20% had correlations below zero. Meaning, the more I pay, the worst I get. The theory is this, consumers can’t accurately assess quality, or they don’t put in the search time to discern quality as a market or better off putting their resources into quality or to promotions to promote quality. The image at other times, and brand building. All the research on consumer propensity to search is very low even for very expensive product categories. Marketers have figured it out and if you’re not going to search. I’m a profit maximizer. I’m going to put my money where I get the highest return.
Having taught this JDM seminar, I’ve always talked about the Herbert Simon work on bounded rationality. I assigned one of his papers for the first time. It’s 1957, a classic paper. He won the Nobel prize for this idea. The idea that people are cognitive misers, that they don’t have the calculation abilities that economists say that they have. They don’t have the processing ability. They also don’t have the desire or motivation to maximize their choices enough because a choice usually requires a lot of work. Most choices aren’t worth that much work. These things are fascinating. I teach a core marketing course to MBAs. I do a section on pricing. You have to, it’s important.
Do you assign my papers?
I’d say probably three-quarters of that lecture is focused on behavioral pricing. They get plenty of economics prior to the course where they get the standard prescriptive, normative thing. It’s illustrative. Your case study is illustrative. The fact is that you don’t need to be deal-prone. You know you don’t need to be deal-prone. Yet you have a hard time not being deal-prone.
I’m fighting it all the time. Hopefully, I’ve gotten better over the years where I’d say, “No, I’m not going to buy that.”
The issue is if you’re happy, it’s fine.
I’m fighting another thing. I have a strong tendency to declutter, to get things out of my house. For the past several years, I don’t want to bring anything new into my house. That has helped me quite a bit. I want my house to have a sparse look to it.
Have you been watching the Marie Kondo stuff on Netflix?
I have and I was doing it before that came out. When my father passed away, he packed up and saved everything. We had so much crap to get out.
[bctt tweet=”Everybody doesn’t have to be the smartest person in the department. What you have to be is productive and a good colleague.” username=””]
You’re doing this as a favor for the person who has to clean out your house when you die. You have proclaimed, these are your words not mine, that you’re not that smart.
I’m a blue-collar academic.
Yet you’ve had a very successful career. I have my guesses as to why that’s the case, but I want to hear your approach.
First of all, if you take smart to motivation, I’ll take motivation over smarts every day because our business is one that you have to have a few good ideas. I do okay with the ideas and I’ll work hard but you don’t know how long it takes to get revisions, the grind of it all. I’m talking to years on a paper and stick to witness. It’s doing what it takes to get the paper in. I’m gritty and I’ll get it done. I also have had the great fortune of co-authors that are extremely smart, and fun and funny to work with. One of the things that I tell Ph.D. students is this won’t be as much fun for you because everything takes so long. If you’re not having fun along the way, get co-authors that make you laugh. There’s a correlation between humor and intelligence so you can get smart co-authors that are smart asses. That’s the best combination there is. I’m not as smart as I am a smart ass so I can contribute there. I’ve had fantastic co-authors and I continue to have. I’ve had okay ideas and I’ve got a pretty good drive, although, not as much as I used to have.
You still have it. You’re still publishing.
Much of that is the camaraderie of doing the research. It’s the process. If I’m in this department and we have a really good department, smart people and I look around and I say, “These people are smart.” In order to have camaraderie with them, you need to be part of the team. Part of the team here means, we’re all trying to do research to raise the profile of our department and the camaraderie is probably the biggest driver for me right now.
What you said mirrors what my guess is. We’d been colleagues for many years. One thing that I’ve noticed about you, this is more from observing you in an administrative role. You’re good about getting stuff off your desk. Something hits your inbox, you take care of it. There’s this personality scale called The Big Five. One of the attributes is called conscientiousness, which basically nowadays, everybody calls grit. Grit is the new conscientiousness. It’s been labeled, it’s been better branding so to speak. You’re very high on conscientiousness.
I’m very high on conscientiousness as an organization and things of that nature, which is very helpful for research.
Research is basically to make the parallel with marketing. It’s product design. When you think about it, there’s a process from ideation to launch. It’s a long one. If it goes well, it might be three years. Staying on top of it regularly, putting in the work and not letting things fall through the cracks. I share your feeling about the camaraderie around doing research. A lot of the tasks are very solitary. You’re reading papers, you’re analyzing data, you’re writing, but yet you’re usually working on a team with at least one to three other people. I find it’s the emails back and forth and opportunity to have some wit, phone calls, meetings in the office or whatever that is.
Meeting with the boss, drinking beer, talking about how you are going to respond to our viewers’ comment, laughing, talking about that or how stupid that reviewer is although we’re those reviewers, and what other people’s saying is stupid. All your colleagues are smart, all reviewers are stupid, but we all review.
This has always been my approach also, which is, I’m going to put in the time.
You’re one of the smart ones.
Thank you. This came out of my undergraduate experiences and my athletic endeavors were always, “I’m going to put in the extra work.” That pays off in a profession that you need good ideas, but also need to execute and those things together matter.
I almost didn’t get into academics. I may have mentioned this and my major professor was trying to talk me into getting into a PhD program within our Master’s program. I said, “No.” He goes, “Why not?” “PhDs? They’re smart.” He laughed a little bit. He said, “You can do it.” Finally, I gave in and I went through the programming and got out. I feel like I do have a role. Everybody doesn’t have to be the smartest guy in the department or the smartest woman in the department. What you have to be is a good colleague. At the end of the day, you have to be productive and you have to be a good colleague. That’s what you want to be.
You have a story before you went into academia, you had a job. At one point in time, your boss pulled you aside and told you that you’re a disruptive force in the office. You’re a funny guy and being funny requires breaking some rules. That cheekiness, that impishness I see still many years later, it’s not gone.
You test the boundaries. You want to push the boundaries of what is appropriate to say and what’s inappropriate.
Academia has more leeway to be a disruptive force, especially once you have tenure and you have a little protection. One of the privileges of academia is the protection that you have, the autonomy that you have, especially if you’re getting your work done and performing at a high level. Besides having the freedom to be a little bit of a disruptive force, do you think that tendency has benefited you or is it something that you’ve been successful despite that disruptiveness? Do you think your disruptiveness at times has helped you?
It helped because I’m a very social person. Let me give you a good example of this. One of our stars in our field is a guy named Chris Janiszewski.
He’s a University of Florida faculty member.
I met him at a conference. He’s one of the biggest smartasses I know, but I connected with him. I found him funny. I laughed at him. He pushed boundaries. I do push boundaries. Not as much as he does. It’s a social connection. You’re drawn to similar others. You and I, when in a seminar, we have a banter. When people come here, they like it. They love our seminars. Being that way connects you to similar others. It makes people feel comfortable around you. It’s a disarming. I’ve never had problems finding a good co-author. I cut up with people quite a bit.
[bctt tweet=”Test the boundaries to push what is appropriate to say what’s inappropriate.” username=””]
You’re very easy to get along with.
Some of my co-authorships have been because of that. I don’t think it’s hurt me at all. The more important thing is it’s me. It’s who I am. It makes me joy coming into school and knowing that I can be myself.
You have to work. At the foundational level, you have to work in order to survive. I’ll be honest, most of my early life was about surviving and part of the reason I chose to be an academic was because of the stability of it all. It’s a big bet to make, but if you land, you have some level of security and stability.
It’s harder to land now than when I landed.
It’s even harder than when I did.
If people were hiring now, I’ll look at him and go, “Are they smart?” Thank God I have tenure.
Being early can be good.
That’s how I got that award because the people now who are doing behavioral pricing research, they’re smart.
Beyond that, once your needs are met, there is this idea I want to enjoy my life. There are people who work to live and there are people who live to work. I have become alive to work person. It’s because the work is creative. It’s enjoyable. I liked the social aspects of it. Also, half of my friends are academics and that makes for a more compelling lifestyle and coming into the office. I liked our seminars, too. A seminar is you invite an outside speaker and usually, they give an hour and fifteen-minute academic talk. It’s rife with questions and back and forth pushing on these ideas.
Oftentimes, they are hostile.
In a lot of universities, they’re very hostile.
What we have managed to do here at Colorado is make them very friendly and part of that is how we interact with the speaker. Also, part of that is how in the audience there’s a lot of banter between the researchers, making fun of each other.
Basically, Donnie makes fun of me whenever I ask the first question in a seminar. I want to ask you a few more questions about things. You are my self-proclaimed life coach. Over the years, even when I’m not asking you for advice.
I give it.
I’m up for full professor and this is a threshold. In academia, it’s an interesting threshold because it’s the final stage. I could die now. I’ve done everything that I’ve set out to do more or less. I think about academia like being on a train. There are these stops along the way, you need to get into a program. You need to pass your first-year paper. There are all these milestones, there are a lot of them and very fast. It’s a very steep learning curve, very painful. You settle into a career. You have these big milestones, getting your assistant professor position, getting tenure and now, this final stop so to speak, yet there’s still a lot of life to live and a long career. As my life coach, what do I do?
You have had a lot of success and be it in the classroom. You’re one of the stars, you are a research star and you do all the service that’s asked of you. You make our university look good. After your sabbatical, when you come back, there will be a time where you’re going to be taking a leadership position. Being Department Chairman or Associate Dean and the real key, the real high is when you have a positive effect on those people around you. Do you make people around you better? For people who are coming up riding that train up to the top, we’re most interested in that you build your own equity and you’ve been doing that quite nicely. You’re going to be a full professor and you’re getting ready to take a sabbatical. When you come back, there’s going to be opportunities for you to take formal leadership roles.
A huge high will be when young assistant professors come to you and say, “Pete, thank you so much for getting that done. It has made our lives better.” I think about the line in a Beatle song all the time and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. I think about that in terms of spreading the love, making other people around you better. I have no doubt about you taking leadership positions because you’ve got the personality that drives and you resonate with people. That is the next step for you. I’m going to fill in for John, I’m going to fill in for Laura and I want to step back. I want to see you because of your personal qualities. You’ll be great at it. Building a coalition and the good things you have, you won’t be keeping them to yourself. You’ll be spreading them out to a larger group. For me, that’s been the most fulfilling thing when people think that you’ve done a good job in making others around you, the whole department better.
I appreciate the advice. This time solicited and I want to say thank you. Obviously, you’ve done that for me when you were the Chairman during that time, and you haven’t screwed up these six months as the Associate Dean. Thank you for that also. You’re a big self-deprecation guy. You’ve also said that when you first started teaching, you were awful. You are terrible. You’re not awful anymore, where has that improvement come from?
It’s come from a few places. I’ll be quite honest with you because it reinforces what I said to you. First, it came with doing it more and stuff like that. When I was younger, I cared about research, get the research or do the research that adds equity to your name. As I got older, I put more time into research. Laura Kornish, when we hired her, I saw her. We hired John and I saw John Lynch. I saw what they put into it and how much they cared and it was infectious. This is an example of affecting. I can be led by people younger than me, older than me. They can set a good example, but I was so positive. Laura had a huge effect on me.
She is a professional.
She cares so much. It became almost self-fulfilling and the more I put into it, the more I got out of it. In the last, I’d say seven, eight years, I hope I’ve taken my teaching to a new level. If I have, it’s because of being around Laura and John so much that I go, “I get it.”
We can look back at your evaluations and see if they’ve improved. I took my teaching to the next level when I realized that the better that I could get at it, the more enjoyable it was going to be for me. When I’m having fun, the students are having fun and it’s this weird circular thing, which is you get better, and then you get more comfortable and confident. You can start having fun because you’re comfortable and confident. The students start having fun and then they start to enjoy learning more. They’re enjoying themselves so you work even harder to make it better. I always finish with the same question, and that is what are you watching, reading or listening to these days that stand out? It’s not just good but excellent.
These miniseries that CNN has been running once called The Bush Years. It’s a six-part mini-series on the Bush dynasty. I watched one called Tricky Dick on the Nixon administration. It had another one on the Presidents at War and it’s about the presidents we’ve had and the roles they play during wartime. Those things are truly excellent. I listen to a lot of audiobooks in World War II. On Amazon prime, I’m watching a 24-part series on the history of World War II. I find those things interesting.
I’m curious if you’ve watched the Darkest Hour, the Churchill movie?
I’ve gone to the Churchill Museum when I was in London. That was one of my favorite places to go to in London. There’s the underground bunker in the Churchill Museum. It’s utterly fantastic. My father was in World War II for four years. I’ve always down World War II beyond being a tragedy and all the people who suffered had a very nostalgic tone to it although my dad never spoke about it other than the humorous things that happened along the way. I grew up in the ‘60s, I was born in ‘56. I go, “Just fifteen, twenty years earlier, this world was at war in World War II,” you watched these videos are black and white.
It feels like a long time ago. I was in Berlin. I went to a museum that was in a bunker. It was an air raid shelter for the local train station. They have three-foot-thick concrete walls. You can still see the places where it took shells and machine gun fire. It’s bizarre being in Berlin thinking about that. It is this Cosmopolitan City. It’s this young city. It’s an international city. It’s filled with startups, creatives and artists.
Hopefully, never again.
Donnie, I knew this would be fun. I appreciate you coming and doing this. Thank you. I appreciate the time.
Thank you, Pete.
Resources mentioned:
- Donnie Lichtenstein
- Chris Janiszewski
- Laura Kornish
- John Lynch
- https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=LtJ60u7SUSw
- https://www.Colorado.edu/business/donald-r-lichtenstein
- https://www.CNN.com/shows/the-bush-years
- https://www.Amazon.com/World-War-II-Complete-Streaming/dp/B00XE30APA/pjmedia-20
About Donnie Lichtenstein
Donnie Lichtenstein is one of Pete’s senior colleagues at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business. He attended the University of Alabama for his undergraduate degree in Marketing and received his PhD from the University of South Carolina. He was an assistant professor at LSU prior to joining CU, where he has been since. He has taught a wide array of classes and has served as both the chair of the marketing division and in the School’s Dean’s office. His main area of research interest is behavioral pricing, and in 2004 we recognized with the Fordham Lifetime Achievement Award in Behavioral Pricing Research.