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Early Career Award Recipient

Best Individual Paper, Society for Consumer Psychology

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2018

Outstanding Area Editor Award

Marketing Science Institute Scholar

Healthy Through Presence or Absence, Nature or Science?: A Framework for Understanding Front-of-Package Food Claims

Justifying by “healthifying”: When expected satisfaction from consumption closure increases the desire to eat more and biases health perceptions of unhealthy leftovers

That’s Not So Bad, I’ll Eat More! Backfire Effects of Calories-per-Serving Information on Snack Consumption

Confession and self-control: A prelude to repentance or relapse?

Parenting motivation and consumer decision-making

A prolific researcher with a focus on consumer behavior, Kelly Haws' work on food decision-making has garnered significant attention from marketers and consumers alike. 

Haws was named a Young Scholar by the Marketing Science Institute (MSI) in 2009, and in 2013, she was awarded the Early Career Award by the Association of Consumer Research. In 2018, she was recognized as an MSI Scholar. She was previously a Vanderbilt Chancellor’s Faculty Fellow, and now holds the Anne Marie and Thomas B. Walker, Jr. Chair. 

Haws is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and an editorial review board member for the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Retailing, the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Marketing Letters, and the Journal of Business Research. She is the co-chair of the Society of Consumer Psychology 2019 conference. 

Haws' work has appeared in numerous publications, including the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Consumer Psychology, the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Management Science, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Appetite, the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, and others.

Haws teaches Consumer Analysis at the graduate level and Principles of Marketing at the undergraduate level.

Diet

Food Decision Making

Financial Decision Making

Self-Control

Faculty Page

Vanderbilt University News Profile

Google Scholar Page

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Research Grant

food-decisionmaking-expert-on-holiday-food-consumption

Anne Marie and Thomas B. Walker, Jr. Professor of Marketing

Kelly Haws, Anne Marie and Thomas B. Walker, Jr. Professor of Marketing, is available for commentary on holiday food choices.

Kelly is a consumer psychologist, focused on food decision-making, including health-related issues and the underlying psychological processes involved. Topics she can speak to include:
The importance of focusing on portion control rather than what types of food you eat The role of food in our social and cultural experiences Why it's okay to enjoy certain foods as a holiday treat, as a single food decision is less important to weight loss and diet than a pattern of eating habits over a period of time When and how the idea of food restriction can backfire 

Food decision-making expert on holiday food consumption

People are natural accomplices who like to conspire together to enjoy a small indulgence and conversely to resist temptation together when the stakes are higher.
 
Researchers from Vanderbilt University and Texas A&M staged a series of experiments that paired consumers against different temptations and gauged how closely their reactions mirrored each other, and how they felt about each other afterward.
 
In a study that tracked how many pieces of candy test subjects consumed during a short film, most duos ate about the same amount.
 
"We find evidence of a general tendency for peers to ultimately match behaviors when facing a mutual temptation," write Kelly L. Haws of Vanderbilt University and Michael L. Lowe of Texas A&M University in the August issue of Journal of Consumer Research in their article "(Im)moral Support: The Social Outcomes of Parallel Self-Control Decisions."
 
Further, test subjects who ate a small amount of candy each later reported liking their partner more than when the study began. But participants who said they ate too much candy reported liking their partner less than when the study began.
 
The findings have relevance for marketers, policy makers and consumers, the researchers say.
 
"Marketers can apply these findings to inform a number of important decisions related to promoting goods perceived as indulgences," Haws said. "Knowing that consumers prefer partners in crime when indulging on a small scale can inform decisions regarding communication strategies and messages, as well as promotional offers, perhaps by using a friends and family type of approach."
 
On the other hand, knowing that mutually abstaining is also rewarding can help policy makers wishing to combat behaviors such as overspending, drug use and overeating, the researchers say.
 
Finally, consumers can use the knowledge to their advantage as they seek to control their decisions in social settings.
 
To learn more about Vanderbilt, visit http://www.vanderbilt.edu.

Why consumers like a "partner in crime" whether they buy or resist

Kelly Haws, the Ann Marie and Thomas B. Walker Jr. Professor of Marketing at the Owen Graduate School of Management discusses strategies for making food decisions during the holidays that can lead to better health outcomes.

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Ask an Expert: How can you make better food decisions during the holidays?

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