Course: Thomas O'Guinn

Thomas C. O'Guinn came to Madison from the University of Illinois. Tom also
taught at UCLA and Duke University. His research is broadly focused on the
sociology of consumer behavior. He works on brands, integrated brand
promotion, visual communication and the social construction of consumer
reality.

Professor O'Guinn's VITA

Classes Fall '09

Marketing Doctoral Semonar MKT971 Syllabus

RESEARCH AWARDS

Twenty Most Cited Articles in Economics and Business, “Brand Community” Muñiz, Albert M., Jr. and Thomas C. O’Guinn, Journal of Consumer Research, 27:4 (March), 2001, 412-431., Thomson Scientific Impact, Awarded March 2007.

Top Five Cited JCR Articles, “Brand Community” Muñiz, Albert M., Jr. and Thomas C. O’Guinn, Journal of Consumer Research, 27:4 (March), 2001, 412-431., Thomson Scientific Impact’ University of Chicago Press, August, 2007.

Winner , "Best Contribution to Journal of Consumer Research , 2001,” Muniz, Albert M., Jr. and Thomas C. O’Guinn, “Brand Community,” Journal of Consumer Research, 27:4, awarded, 2004.

Finalist , “Best Contribution to Journal of Consumer Research ,” Shrum, L.J., Robert S. Wyer, Jr., and Thomas C. O’Guinn, “The Effects of Television Consumption on Social Perceptions: The Use of Priming Procedures to Investigate Psychological Processes,” Journal of Consumer Research, 24 (March), 447-458, 1998, awarded 2001.

Two papers selected forEssentials of Marketing : Leigh McAlister, Ruth Bolton, Ross Rizley (Eds.), Marketing Science Institute, 2006. (O’Guinn and ShrumJCR, 1997; Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001) .

Co-Winner , "Best Contribution to Journal of Consumer Research, 1997", O’Guinn, Thomas C. and L.J. Shrum,” The Role of Television in the Construction of Consumer Reality,” Journal of Consumer Research, March, 1997, awarded 2000.

Honorable Mention Ferber Award -dissertation advisor, 1998, for Shrum, L.J., Robert S. Wyer, Jr., and Thomas C. O’Guinn, “The Effects of Television Consumption on Social Perceptions: The Use of Priming Procedures to Investigate Psychological Processes,” Journal of Consumer Research, 24 (March), 447-458, 1998, awarded 1999.

Finalist , “Best Contribution to Journal of Consumer Research, 1987-1989,” O’Guinn, Thomas C. and Ronald J. Faber, “Compulsive Buying: A Phenomenological Exploration,” Journal of Consumer Research, 16:2 (Sept.), 1989, awarded 1990.

THE SELECTED WORKS

O’Guinn, Thomas C. and Albert Muniz, Jr. (2009), “Collective Brand Relationships,” in Joseph Priester, Deborah MacInnis, and C.W. Park (eds.), Handbook of Brand Relations, N.Y. Society for Consumer Psychology and M.E. Sharp.

O’Guinn, Thomas C. and Albert Muniz, Jr. (2009), “The Social Brand: Towards a Sociological Model of Brands,” in Loken, Barbara, Rohini Ahluwalia and Michael J. Houston (eds.), Contemporary Branding Issues: A Research Perspective, New York: Taylor and Francis, in press.

Pracejus, John W., G. Douglas Olsen and Thomas C. O’Guinn, “ How Nothing Became Something: White Space, Rhetoric, History and Meaning, ” Journal of Consumer Research, accepted for publication, June, 2006. (Order of authorship was arbitrary).

Muñiz, Albert M. Jr., Thomas C. O'Guinn and Gary Alan Fine, "Rumor in Brand Community," in Advances in Theory and Methodology in Social and Organizational Psychology: A Tribute to Ralph Rosnow, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006.

O’Guinn, Thomas C., “Foreword," in T. Mehta, The Academics' Little Helper: A Writing Guide, Clovelly, Australia : Tanvi Mehta Writing and Editing Services, xii-xiii, 2006.

O’Guinn, Thomas C. and Albert M. Muniz, Jr., “Communal Consumption and the Brand” in Inside Consumption: Frontiers of Research on Consumer Motives, Goals, and Desires, David Glen Mick and S. Ratneshwar. (eds.) New York: Routledge, 2005, 252-272.

Muñiz, Albert M., Jr. and Thomas C. O’Guinn, “Marketing Communications in a World of Consumption and Brand Communities,” in Allan J. Kimmel (ed.), Marketing Communication: New Approaches, Technologies, and Styles , London: Oxford University Press 2005, 63-85.

Muñiz, Albert M., Jr. and Thomas C. O’Guinn, “Brand Community,” Journal of Consumer Research, 27:4 (March), 2001, 412-431. (Awarded Best of JCR 2001)

O’Guinn, Thomas C. and L.J. Shrum, “The Role of Television in the Construction of Consumer Reality,” Journal of Consumer Research, March, 1997, 278-294, (co-winner, Best of JCR, 1997).

Shrum, L.J. and Thomas C. O'Guinn, “Processes and Effects in the Construction of Social Reality: Accessibility as an Explanatory Variable,” Communications Research, July, 1993. 436-471.

Faber, Ronald J. and Thomas C. O'Guinn, “A Clinical Screener for Compulsive Buying,” Journal of Consumer Research, 19:3 (Dec.) 1992. 459-469.

O'Guinn, Thomas C. “Touching Greatness: The Central Midwest Barry Manilow Fan Club,” in Russell W. Belk (ed.), Highways and Buyways: Naturalistic Research from the Consumer Behavior Odyssey, 1991, Provo, UT: The Association for Consumer Research, 102-111.

O’Guinn, Thomas C. and Ronald J. Faber, “Compulsive Buying: A Phenomenological Exploration,” Journal of Consumer Research, 16:2 (Sept.), 1989. (Finalist Best of JCR). 147-157.

O’Guinn, Thomas C. and Russell W. Belk, “Heaven on Earth: Consumption at Heritage Village, USA,” Journal of Consumer Research, 16:2, 1989.

O’Guinn, Thomas C. and William D. Wells, “Subjective Discretionary Income,” Marketing Research, 1:1, (March) 1989, 32-41.

Faber, Ronald J. and Thomas C. O'Guinn, “Expanding the View of Consumer Socialization: A Non-Utilitarian Mass Mediated Perspective on Consumer Socialization,” Research in Consumer Behavior, v. 3, Elizabeth Hirschman and Jagdish Sheth (eds.), 1988, 49-77.

Faber, Ronald J., Thomas O'Guinn, and John A. McCarty, “Ethnicity, Acculturation and Product Attribute Importance,” Psychology and Marketing, 4:2, 1987, 121-234.

RESEARCH SUMMARY

Sociology of Consumption  I have studied several behaviors, processes and effects under this broad category including the interaction of traditional socialization agents with consumer and marketer imperatives. This is the unifying theme in my work.

My research career began with an exploration of a unique consumption community -- innovators for new movies. I examined how they differed from other moviegoers in their use and consumption of movies, their use of media supplied information about new movies, and their actions within social networks of evaluation and referral. I then moved on to another unique sociological group – U.S. immigrants - and how this group differed in their consumer socialization, media use, and buying behavior. The consumer acculturation of ethnic minorities is a topic which history and demography have shown to be of considerable significance.

Interest in consumer socialization and unique groups lead me to studying compulsive buying. Here, I was primarily interested in understanding why and how buying could become seriously problematic. I, along with Ronald Faber, pioneered work (O’Guinn and Faber, JCR, 1989) on compulsive consumption. The screener we developed (Faber and O’Guinn, JCR, 1992) is now widely used by mental health professionals and medical school researchers. Compulsive buying is currently under consideration for inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. Our 1989 paper was a finalist for Best of JCR.

I then worked on television as a mode of consumer socialization. I continue to pursue my interest in the manner in which consumers use the mass media in forming and maintaining their beliefs about the social, material and economic worlds in which they live. How do consumers form beliefs about what other consumers have and do? Increasingly this knowledge is acquired though mass-mediated and computer mediated means. The significance of this work has been recently underscored by the increasing use of product placement and the strategic intertwining of reality, fiction and branded entertainment. One paper (O’Guinn and Shrum, JCR 1997) won Best of JCR, and the next paper (Shrum, Wyer and O’Guinn 1998) was a finalist for Best of JCR the following year. The dissertation from which some of the work came (I was the advisor) was a Ferber Award Honorable Mention in 1998.

I have also done work where classic sociological topics touch consumption such as religion (O’Guinn and Belk, JCR, 1989) and celebrity (O’Guinn 1991, 2000). Again, how consumption is conceived and enacted within the contexts of religion and celebrity possesses obvious currency in the contemporary world. I continue to be interested in these topics, particularly my new work on politicized brands.

I am now interested in communities of consumers (much like both movie innovators and immigrants) and how they develop, communicate and impact consumption. My work with Albert Muniz (I was his dissertation advisor) on brand community, particularly enacted in computer- mediated environments, is in this vein. Our 2001 paper won the Best of JCR Award for that year.

Brands  I am interested in the way social forces (including marketing and consumer collectives) act upon brands. Rather than viewing brands as something delivered to consumers by marketers, this research focuses on the way consumers actively participate in the social creation of brands. This work is particularly significant in the context of computer mediated communication and on-line social aggregations such as brand communities. Two recent papers in Brand handbooks demonstrate work toward a social model of brands.

Brand Community (Awarded Best of JCR)

Visual Consumer Communication  I am very interested in the how advertising works at a visual level. Two of my papers are now published in this area.

How Nothing Became Something: White Space, Rhetoric, History and Meaning

Branded Entertainment and the Social Construction of Consumer Realities  How do consumers use mediated portrayals of embedded consumption to form and maintain beliefs about the world outside their direct social milieu? New work with commercial embeds and various elements of visual dissension link several of my research interests.

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Thomas O'Guinn