Tony Stovall
Professor Emeritus | Indiana University, Kelley School of Business
Indianapolis, IN, UNITED STATES
Professor Stovall’s research interests include transformative consumer research, digital marketing and online consumer behavior.
Biography
Tony Stovall is a clinical associate professor of marketing at the IU Kelley School of Business on the IUPUI campus. He most recently was an assistant professor of marketing at Towson University in Maryland and served two years as assistant professor of marketing at Woodbury University in Burbank, California. Stovall received his PhD in retailing and consumer sciences and his MBA from the University of Arizona. He received his undergraduate degree in international relations from Stanford.
Stovall’s research interests include transformative consumer research, digital marketing and online consumer behavior, urbanism, and consumer identify. His work has been published in the Consumption, Markets & Culture, Electronic Markets, Journal of Marketing Management, the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing and the Journal of Cultural Marketing Strategy.
Before pursuing academia, Stovall’s professional career included time at Korn/Ferry International as a manager and senior executive services representative, as a technical writer at SW Consulting Group, and as a project manager for Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.
Stovall is teaching marketing courses in the Kelley Indianapolis Undergraduate Program, the Business of Medicine Physician MBA Program, and the Evening MBA Program.
Areas of Expertise (5)
Consumer Identity
Online Consumer Behavior
Transformative Consumer Research
Digital Marketing
Urbanism
Education (3)
University of Arizona: PhD, Retailing and Consumer Sciences (Minors - Marketing and Human Geography) 2015
University of Arizona, Eller College of Management: M.B.A. 2008
Stanford University: A.B., International Relations 1989
Links (1)
Articles (5)
The “right to consume”? Re-thinking the dynamics of exclusion/inclusion in consumer society
Consumption Markets & Culture
Jacob C Miller, Tony Stovall
2019 Consumption is a political relationship. This article considers competing political discourses around consumption as different versions of a hypothetical right to consume. In the first section, we consider how the domain of consumption can express the critical potential of the “right to the city,” a concept inspired by Henri Lefebvre that has had widespread influence in urban studies and related fields. In the second section we consider how the right to consume can also become a bulwark for capitalist ideologies of an individualistic and destructive right to consume. A third section concludes on recent trends in consumption studies that point to ways that capitalism seeks to assuage and manage these tensions through ongoing innovations in consumer technology and finance. New questions about rights and democracy must emerge to confront this new techno-economy of consumer relations. In short, while we affirm the right to consume for the most vulnerable, we also insist on deconstructing the system of consumption as it is currently configured.
Consumer interpretations of digital ownership in the book market
Electronic Markets
Sabrina V Helm, Victoria Ligon, Tony Stovall, Silvia Van Riper
2018 Technological advances in electronic markets, particularly product digitization, have transformed customer-product interactions. For example, altered ownership perceptions in the digital domain affect product acquisition, usage and disposition. This study’s goal is to explore how consumers conceptualize ownership of digital possessions in order to help marketers develop tailored positioning and commercialization strategies. Comparing physical books and e-books, we contribute to the literature on electronic markets, which neglects a consumer-focused perspective on digital possessions. Using focus groups with U.S. consumers, we identify six themes surrounding perceptions of psychological digital ownership, which mainly portray a constricted sense of ownership, limiting usage experience, and value perceptions. However, we also find that ease of disposition favors e-book usage. Typical assumptions about younger consumers’ preference for digital products were not supported. Based on our findings, we offer two managerial approaches: (1) enhancing the digital product experience or (2) emancipating digital products from their physical correlates.
Omission and commission as marketplace trauma
Journal of Public Policy & Marketing
Aronte Marie Bennett, Stacey Menzel Baker, Samantha Cross, JP James, Gregory Bartholomew, Akon E Ekpo, Geraldine Rosa Henderson, Martina Hutton, Apoorv Khare, Abhijit Roy, Tony Stovall, Charles Ray Taylor
2016 This article discusses the concepts of omission and commission as marketplace trauma within the theoretical framework of cultural trauma theory. The authors identify the meanings and processes of the people, activities, and outcomes likely when marketplace omission and/or commission occur, as well as the factors that elevate these events from collective to cultural trauma. The authors use concepts of social structure, collective practices, and collective discourse in exploring the interconnectivity of marketplace traumas and their actors, victims, and consequences (i.e., constrained consumption, damaged marketing systems, and institutional privilege). They then leverage the same framework to propose further research and corrective actions.
Rethinking Identity and Ownership in the Digital Consumption ERA: A Qualitative Study of Consumer Relations with Digital Possessions
Ideas in Marketing: Finding the New and Polishing the Old
Victoria Ligon, Tony Stovall, Silvia Van Riper
2015 Digital consumption has grown exponentially in the last 20 years. As the digitization of products becomes more ubiquitous, individuals find themselves having to reformulate symbolic meanings once exclusively associated with material possessions. New forms of ownership of digital objects are challenging the existing roles that possessions play in self-identity formation. It is the goal of this paper to uncover these emerging relationships.
The experience of risk in families: conceptualisations and implications for transformative consumer research
Journal of Marketing Management
Simone Pettigrew, Laurel Anderson, Wendy Boland, Valérie-Inés de La Ville, ’Ilaisaane ME Fifita, Marie-Hélène Fosse-Gomez, Marie Kindt, Laura Luukkanen, Ingrid Martin, Lucie K Ozanne, Dante M Pirouz, Andrea Prothero, Tony Stovall
2014 Families represent an important context for understanding and addressing the various forms of risk experienced by consumers. This article defines and discusses the concept of risk as it applies to the familial unit, with a particular focus on the liminal transitions that occur within families and the resiliency required for families to identify and adopt effective coping strategies to manage these transitions. A framework is proposed that offers researchers an approach for applying concepts related to family risk to various consumption-related problems and issues. This framework constitutes a starting point that can be developed and expanded to facilitate a deeper understanding of the internal and external forces that influence families and their well-being, and the role consumption plays therein. Potential avenues for future transformative consumer research are proposed in this important but under-developed field.