Lucas Carden, PhD

Lucas Carden, PhD is an expert in survey research and experimental design and serves as Vice President of Litigation Surveys and Consumer Science at IMS Legal Strategies. He has more than 15 years of experience designing, conducting, and analyzing surveys for litigation, marketing research, and academic research. Dr. Carden is also a testifying expert for matters involving trademark and false and deceptive advertising disputes.

Dr. Carden has worked on high-stakes litigation in federal and state courts, as well as cases brought to the National Advertising Division and the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. He has extensive experience designing, implementing, and analyzing surveys to establish likelihood of confusion, secondary meaning, and genericness, and to assess consumer perception and materiality of allegedly deceptive advertising and marketing claims.

Dr. Carden has contributed to the field of survey research in trademark and deceptive advertising litigation by leading research for a chapter in an authoritative treatise; see “Psychological Considerations in Designing Trademark and False Advertising Survey Questionnaires” in Trademark and Deceptive Advertising Surveys: Law, Science, and Design, 2nd ed., edited by Shari Seidman Diamond and Jerre B. Swann, ABA Publishing, 2022. He has published peer-reviewed research on consumer perception and behavior in psychology and consumer science journals, presented his research at academic conferences, and held academic positions at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business and Occidental College.

Prior to joining IMS via the firm's acquisition of MMR Strategy Group, Dr. Carden conducted consumer research using methods from cognitive and behavioral science, as well as educational workshops on survey methodology for Fortune 500 companies such as Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, and Intel.

Professional Experience

• Vice President, Litigation Surveys and Consumer Science, IMS Legal Strategies, 2025-present
• Vice President, MMR Strategy Group, 2024-2025
• Founder and Managing Partner, FocusMark LLC, 2019-2024
• Behavioral Scientist, Catalyst Behavioral Sciences, 2019-2023
• Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology, Occidental College, 2020-2022
• Postdoctoral Scholar and Research Associate, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, 2019-2020
• Invited Visiting Researcher, INSEAD Marketing Department, Fontainebleau, France; Sorbonne Université Behavioural Lab, Paris, France, 2018
• Researcher, Dr. Wendy Wood Lab, University of Southern California, 2012-2019

Education

• PhD, Psychology (Concentration: Social/Consumer Psychology), University of Southern California, 2019
• MS, Human Behavior, University of Southern California, 2013
• BA, Psychology, summa cum laude, University of Kentucky, 2010