Columbia Business School Directory

Eugene M. Lang Research Grant, Columbia Business School, 2011

Annual UH Doctoral Symposium Fellow, 2011

Luxury Education Foundation Scholarship, Columbia University, 2011

AMA-Sheth Doctoral Consortium Fellow, Seattle, WA, 2012

Egocentric Categorization and Product Judgment: Seeing Your Traits in what you own (and their Opposite in what you don’t) (2012) Coauthor(s): Weiss, Liad and Gita V. Johar
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My broad research interests lie in the interplay between consumers and brands. More specifically, I am is interested in the psychological processes that lead to, and the ones that follow from, product acquisition, and how such processes affect product judgment and consumer choice. I am currently working on several projects that directly relate to this area. For example, in my dissertation, I investigate whether and how acquiring a product changes the way consumers judge the product. Specifically, I explore how the acquisition of a product may lead consumers to differentially assign decision weights to product traits with which they can relate (e.g. creativity, dependability) versus traits that are unique to a product (e.g. durability, portability). I also examine how product acquisition can lead consumers to use information about their own traits as comparison standards when evaluating the acquired product. Further, I explore how acquiring a product induces consumers to use standards set by the product (e.g., the creativity of an apple computer) to judge their own traits and abilities.