Kelly Herd, Ph.D.

Associate Professor University of Connecticut

  • Storrs CT

Professor Herd focuses on creativity and product design as they relate to social cognition, identity, and emotions

Contact

University of Connecticut

View more experts managed by University of Connecticut

Biography

Marketing professor Kelly Herd’s research focuses primarily on creativity and product design as they relate to a variety of topics including social cognition, identity, and emotions. She is particularly interested in what motivates consumers to engage in aesthetic product design and how companies can better enable individuals to develop unique and effective solutions to fulfill their own needs and wants (e.g., customization) as well as those of the marketplace (e.g., crowdsourcing). Dr. Herd’s has been published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, and Journal of Consumer Psychology. In 2010, she won both the Marketing Science Institute’s Alden G. Clayton Dissertation Proposal Award and the Society for Marketing Advances’ “Best Retail Proposal” Dissertation Award.

Dr. Herd holds a Ph.D. in Marketing from the University of Colorado and a B.S. in Business Administration from Washington and Lee University. Prior to completing her Ph.D., she specialized in public relations and consumer research, developing marketing campaigns for clients including Toshiba, Disney, NBC, and Pepsi.

Areas of Expertise

Emotions
Product Design
Social Cognition
Consumer Behavior
Creativity
Identity

Education

University of Colorado

Ph.D.

Washington and Lee University

B.S.

Social

Media

Media Appearances

The 30-second trick that can make anyone more creative

Fast Company  online

“A lot of people are told to be very objective. ‘You’re a professional. Think about this in an objective way. Don’t get caught up in emotions,'” says Kelly Herd, marketing professor at the University of Connecticut. “But what we find is that [the empathetic] process actually leads to more creativity.”

View More

Amazon Wants To Change How You Buy Condoms, And Other 'Embarrassing' Items

Forbes  print

“Embarrassment has received sparse attention in consumer psychology literatures,” according to the study, “Wetting the Bed at Twenty-One: Embarrassment as a Private Emotion,” co-authored by Kelly Herd, assistant professor of marketing .

View More

Why even online shopping can get embarrassing

Futurity  online

The authors demonstrate that embarrassment is an emotion, which can also be experienced without the presence of others, and by self-judgment. Such private embarrassment can occur, for instance, when one wets the bed as an adult or overeats in the privacy of one’s own kitchen.

View More

Show All +

Articles

Crowdfunding a Project? Why Casting a Wider Net Helps

American Marketing Association

Kelly Herd, Girish Mallapragada, and Vishal Narayan

2021-08-16

Crowdfunding offers an alternative for creators looking to raise funds for their ideas. Creators list their ideas on online crowdfunding platforms by describing their idea, setting a monetary goal for fundraising, and requesting backers to support their idea. When backers find ideas to their liking on the platform, they support them by committing funds and, in so doing, grow the community as they form co-backing relationships with other backers. Such co-backing relationships are referred to as affiliations. However, affiliations might have unexpected consequences to the success of ideas. In a new study in the Journal of Marketing, we study how affiliations among backers affect the success of crowdfunded ideas.

View more

Look at Me! Or Don’t…: How Mere Social Presence Impacts Innovation Adoption

Journal of the Association for Consumer Research

Xu, Lidan, Ravi Mehta, and Kelly B. Herd

2019

While the adoption of innovative products offers an opportunity for consumers to stand out and signal their uniqueness, such adoption also may also be associated with social risk. The current research highlights how the mere presence of others can make these related and often conflicting factors salient and in turn impact consumers’ willingness to fund or buy innovative products.

View more

Head vs. Heart: The Effect of Objective versus Feelings-Based Mental Imagery on New Product Creativity

Journal of Consumer Research

Herd, Kelly B. and Ravi Mehta

2018

Imagination visual mental imagery, a mental simulation process that involves imagining an end user interacting with an end product, has been proposed as an efficient strategy to incorporate end-user experiences during new product ideation. Consumer research finds that this strategy enhances overall product usefulness, but does not resolve whether and how this process may impact outcome originality.

View more

Show All +