Eller Faculty Research Video: Jennifer Savary, Consumer Decision Making

Jennifer Savary, associate professor of marketing and Terry J. and Tina Lundgren Endowed Chair for Marketing and Retail, focuses her research on consumer decision making—specifically how goals and motivations shape a consumer’s choices.  

Savary’s most recent published paper studies situations in which consumers keep paying for subscriptions or memberships to services and products that they don’t use. “The act of cancelling has more meaning than we think it does,” says Savary.

Savary is an award-winning behavioral scientist and educator. She earned her Ph.D. from Yale University and an MBA from University of Southern California, and is currently an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Arizona. She is an expert at consumer judgment and decision making and consumer psychology. She is especially interested in how identity aspirations and goals influence consumer behavior choice.

Her research has been published in the top Marketing and Psychology journals such as Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Her findings have been featured in popular outlets such as Harvard Business Review, Money.com and CNBC.com. She has been recognized by Eller College as the Outstanding Marketing Faculty Member of the year, Faculty Thesis Advisor of the Year and received the Department of Marketing Research Excellence Award in 2021. Most recently Jennifer was named a MSI Young Scholar in recognition of her contributions to the field and potential for future scholarship.

Previously, Savary worked in the public sector at the White House and the United States House of Representatives, and in private industry for PricewaterhouseCoopers and Toyota Motor Sales. She also owned and served as principal for Savary Associates, and over the last 25 years has consulted extensively with organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 brands. Jennifer currently lives with her husband and two young sons in Tucson, Arizona, where she can be found riding her road-bike on the loop most weekends.