Dr. Yancy Edwards
Management / Marketing / Entrepreneurship Department
Office: Grove Hall 235
Phone: (717) 477-1587
E-mail: YDEdwards@ship.edu
Yancy D. Edwards is an Associate Professor of Marketing in the John L. Grove College of Business at Shippensburg University. He received his Ph.D. in Business Administration (Marketing) from The Ohio State University, along with an M.A. in Business Administration. He also holds an M.S. and an Advanced Certificate for Post-Master’s Study in Applied Mathematics from Johns Hopkins University, and a B.A. in Mathematics and Physics from Franklin & Marshall College.
Dr. Edwards’ research focuses on developing models that are both theoretically insightful and practically predictive of consumer behavior. His work integrates psychological theory with econometric and statistical modeling, with particular emphasis on Bayesian methods and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimation. His research addresses substantive marketing problems, including market segmentation, consumer choice, product development, brand loyalty, and the contextual influences on decision-making.
His scholarly work has appeared in leading journals, including Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, Marketing Letters, Personnel Review, and Applied Marketing Analytics. A central theme across this body of research is understanding how preferences are constructed and revealed in realistic decision environments, and how firms can better identify unmet demand, taste heterogeneity, and variation in consumer sensitivity to marketing attributes. His more recent work advances theory on contextualized consumer utility, loyalty intensity, and experiential states such as flow in service encounters, with several manuscripts currently under review or in advanced stages of development.
Before entering academia, Dr. Edwards spent eight years with Bell Atlantic (now Verizon), where he worked extensively in marketing research and analytics roles supporting multiple strategic business units. This industry experience continues to inform his applied research and teaching, grounding both in real managerial decision contexts.
Dr. Edwards is an award-winning teacher with extensive experience at the undergraduate, MBA, and doctoral levels across multiple institutions in the United States and abroad. At Shippensburg University, he regularly teaches Principles of Marketing, Marketing Research, Marketing Analytics, Principles of Retailing, and MBA-level courses in Buyer Behavior and Marketing Management. His teaching philosophy emphasizes clarity, structure, and application—particularly helping students overcome anxiety around quantitative and analytical material by rebuilding foundational skills, reinforcing conceptual understanding, and demonstrating relevance through real-world examples. He is deeply committed to student success, rigorous standards, and experiential learning that prepares students for data-driven marketing roles.
In recognition of his contributions to teaching and advising, Dr. Edwards has received several honors, including the Heather A. Reed Award for Teaching, the Staples Award for Advising, and the Sydney N. Bridgett ’51 Award. He has also received research awards and fellowships throughout his academic career.
Dr. Edwards is an active member of the American Marketing Association, Marketing Science, the Academy of Marketing Science, and the American Statistical Association. He currently serves on the Editorial Review Board for the Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science and has served on multiple doctoral dissertation committees.