Raghunathan Awarded NSF Grant
for Consumer Behavior Research

Austin, TX—Raj Raghunathan, associate professor of marketing at the McCombs School of Business, has been awarded a $442,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award for his ongoing research in consumer behavior.

Raghunathan's research focuses on the implications of the theory that consumers believe there is a negative correlation between how enjoyable a product or activity is and how useful or practical it is. He has termed this the "more fun equals less good" intuition.

In the context of food, Raghunathan and his colleagues Ying Zhang and Rebecca Naylor have found evidence of its operation: People perceive unhealthy food to taste better and this perception affects their actual judgments and choices.

Raghunathan is extending his work into the area of tobacco consumption. The research question is: Will consumers find that cigarettes with higher nicotine taste better? He believes that most consumers may actually not prefer cigarettes with higher nicotine in blind taste tests, but will prefer them when the nicotine levels are made apparent. This theory, if proven true, would have important public policy implications.

Raghunathan is also looking into cultural differences and how they might affect the "more fun equals less good" intuition. Preliminary studies show that people from non-protestant traditions (e.g., citizens of France, as opposed to those from the United Kingdom or America) are less prone to believing in the intuition. Thus, the belief appears to be rooted in our religious and cultural worldviews.

The CAREER award is a difficult grant to earn, and only one in twenty applicants receive funding. For applicants from business schools, the acceptance rate is even lower. However, Raghunathan urges junior faculty at business schools to consider applying.

"Business, finance and marketing application-oriented research can have significant real world impact and it’s important for us to get NSF’s attention," Raghunathan said.

"One of the benefits of the CAREER grant is that it makes you think of the potential theoretical and broader impact of the research idea upfront," he said. "As a result, your idea turns into a research program rather than just a one-off paper."