When Professor of Marketing Thomas Kramer joined the faculty at the UCR School of Business, he already had plenty of published research and accolades to his credit. That record of noteworthy hard work and dedication to both knowledge and higher education has continued in full force at UCR.
“The School of Business is on a huge upward trajectory, and being part of a growing program is very fulfilling,” says Kramer, who is also the school’s associate dean of undergraduate programs. “The dean is very supportive of the faculty and staff, and the students are amazing. I’m so impressed with them, and if I can be a little part of their transformational journey, then I’m happy.”
Kramer’s dedication to classroom instruction, his research, and administrative leadership was recently recognized with his appointment as an Anderson Presidential Chair in Business Administration.
His expertise is in marketing, and he teaches consumer behavior at the undergraduate and Ph.D. levels in addition to teaching global marketing and marketing research. He previously was a professor at University of South Carolina and City University of New York Baruch College.
“I find marketing fascinating—it has many different areas to it, but it all comes back to the consumer and giving them what they want. So, early on, I was interested in understanding consumers and their psychology,” says Kramer, who was the first in his family to attend college. He earned a bachelor’s degree in international marketing and an MBA at Baruch College and holds a Ph.D. in marketing from Stanford University. “During my BBA and MBA programs, class projects included research, but I didn’t commit to researching consumer psychology until I entered my Ph.D. program,” he says.
“Teaching this topic is also amazing because we all think we are rational consumers, yet as we cover the topics in the classroom, it turns out that much of what we do is automatic, and not always rational as economics might want us to believe.”
With this new Anderson Chair appointment, we talked to Kramer about his “no electronics” rule in class, the very long time it takes to produce research papers, and what he’s been up to lately, including climbing Mount Kilimanjaro:
Conducting research is a long and detailed process. How do you stay focused?
It takes three to four years from the time one starts a research project until it is accepted for publication. Some of my research took six years. That is a long time to work on a topic, so I always want to make sure that the topic is super interesting to me. That means it should be about a phenomenon that is quirky and doesn’t seem to be rational behavior. I also have couple of papers on schadenfreude just because emotion fascinates me.
What research topics are you exploring currently?
I’m working on a few projects related to impatience. In one, we investigate if and why intending to rent, rather than buy, a product that turns out to be temporarily out of stock makes waiting for the product to be available more intolerable.
In another, we examine if not being able to touch a product in a store because it is in a case or behind acrylic barriers creates impatience among consumers who have a high need to touch products, which is then expressed in a completely different subsequent context, such as later on choosing express shipping when buying something else online.
How would you describe your instructional/classroom style?
I’m very old school: I do not allow electronic devices in the classroom. Research has shown that students don’t process the incoming information when taking notes using a laptop; they just type what they hear. But when taking notes with pen and paper, they have to process the incoming information since they cannot write as fast as they can type.
I’m constantly on the move in the classroom. I never look at my own slides or read from them. I also learned early on that it is really important to treat every student equally and to be very detailed in the syllabus so that there is no uncertainty regarding expectations. No student has ever told me they “didn’t know” because everything is spelled out in the syllabus.
What advice do you have for students considering studying marketing?
Do it! But find a niche within marketing, such as advertising, digital marketing, marketing research, or marketing analytics. The more specialized the better. Complement that with courses in other departments, such as psychology, statistics, or economics, depending on what area in marketing you are interested in. Have at least one internship before graduating—two are even better.
What do you do to balance your career outside of work?
I work out and run every day. I just ran a marathon in Cambodia, and in January, I hiked Mount Kilimanjaro. I love to travel, and I’ve been to 44 countries and seven territories. Plus, I enjoy mindless TV: I’m probably one of the biggest Judge Judy fans out there!
Bonus: Research to Read
Kramer’s research interests focus on examining factors that influence preference construction and subsequent decision-making, including extraordinary consumer beliefs—such as superstitious, magical, fateful, or karmic beliefs, biases, and heuristics.
His research has appeared in many top marketing and decision-making journals, and he has held associate editor and co-editor positions for the Journal of Consumer Psychology since 2015. He was also an associate editor for the Journal of Consumer Research for four years. “These are among the best journals for work in behavioral marketing/consumer behavior research,” he says. He has also provided the keynote at the China Marketing International Conference several times.
Students and marketing professionals will want to read Kramer’s most recent research published in the Journal of Marketing Research:
“The Influence of Shared Consumption on Product Efficacy Perceptions: The Detrimental Effect of Sharing with Strangers,” is a study by Kramer and co-authors Lauren Block, Mahima Hada, and Lama Lteif. “My co-authors and I show the potential detriments to asking consumers to share exhaustible products, like hand sanitizers,” says Kramer. “Often, we share with strangers, and we find that consumers believe that the shared resource, such as a hand sanitizer, is less effective when shared with strangers than with friends. To make up for it, they may actually end up using more of it than necessary.” For an overview of this paper, visit UCR Business News: “Consumers Tend to Overuse Shared Products.”
“Ritualistic Consumption Decreases Loneliness by Increasing Meaning,” is a study by Kramer and co-authors Yixia Sun and Xuehua Wang. “We show that even minimal rituals, such as following a series of steps when preparing tea, can give consumers’ lives meaning, and that in turn lowers their feelings of loneliness,” says Kramer. For an overview of this paper, visit UCR Business News: “Lonely? These Odd Rituals Can Help.”