Katie S. Mehr, Ph.D.
I am an Assistant Professor in the Marketing, Business Economics, and Law department at the Alberta School of Business at the University of Alberta. I earned my Ph.D. from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in May 2023.
My research focuses on understanding consumer behavior. Thus far, I have pursued two broad research streams.
In my primary stream of research, I explore how consumers rate products and experiences, and how they draw inferences from other consumers’ ratings. For example, in a recent publication, I explore how consumers’ overall ratings of an experience change depending on whether they asked to rate specific attributes of that experience. Some of my other projects in this area explore how rater agreement or disagreement, updated ratings, or consumer and critic ratings shown jointly affect consumers’ product perceptions.
In another stream of research, I study interventions that help consumers increase their motivation and achieve their goals. In one paper, we found that consumers benefit from “copy-paste prompts” that encourage consumers to mimic a goal-achievement strategy used by an acquaintance. In another project, we found that consumers are more motivated by “streaky” incentives – those that increase with consecutive behaviors – than by larger but constant incentives. I am also planning a field experiment that explores the benefits (and/or costs) of encouraging people to achieve streaks and exploring how self-given incentives can affect motivation.
If you'd like to contact me, you can email me at kmehr@ualberta.ca.