Chethana Achar

Professor Achar's research studies social stigma and how it shapes consumer behavior, with a focus on public health marketing. She investigates how stigmatization of health issues (such as mental health, STDs) and risky behaviors (such as smoking, being overweight) shapes consumers' likelihood for seeking healthcare support for mental health issues, vaccinations, illness screenings, etc. In conjunction with stigma, she also studies the downstream consequences of consumers' perceptions of morality (i.e., beliefs of what is good and bad) in domains such a health and service failures. Her research investigates a broad spectrum of beliefs about morality, including the strength of moral beliefs and variance in what people perceive to be moral and not moral. Dr. Achar uses multi-methodological approach in her research including experiments, field studies, and big data analyses.

Professor Achar has prior professional experience as a Brand Manager in the Alco-Beverage industry, and holds a PhD in Marketing from University of Washington.