Professor Balachander's teaching interests are in marketing strategy, pricing, and high-technology marketing. His research interests are in competitive marketing strategy, pricing, and market signaling, including use of pricing, advertising and branding for signaling purposes. He was recognized with a Purdue University Faculty Scholar award in 2009. A 2012 study published in the Journal of Product Innovation Management ranked Professor Balachander No. 16 among the world's top innovation management scholars based on articles published in the top marketing journals.

In his research, Professor Balachander has applied game-theoretic models to the study of strategic marketing issues such as price and quality signaling, bundling, entry deterrence, and everyday low pricing. In his other stream of work, he has analyzed supermarket scanner-panel data and single-source data to understand pricing, advertising, and cross-category promotion effects. His research has been published or is forthcoming in Journal of Marketing, Management Science, Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Research, and Marketing Letters. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of Marketing Science.