Debora Thompson

Debora V. Thompson is the Beyer Family Associate Professor of Marketing at the McDonough School of Business. She earned a PhD in Marketing from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. Her research interests are in the area of consumers’ judgment and decision making, information processing, and persuasion.

Professor Thompson uses psychological principles to predict how consumers form preferences and recommend effective marketing strategies. She was selected by the Marketing Science Institute as one the most promising young scholars in marketing in 2011. Her work has been published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and the Harvard Business Review. She currently serves on the editorial review board of leading marketing journals (JM, JMR, JCR, JAMS, JCP, IJRM).

Prior to entering academia, Professor Thompson worked as a marketing research analyst in Brazil, helping companies design customer satisfaction and market segmentation studies.

Education

University of Maryland-College Park - Ph.D.

Publications

Articles in Journals (12)

Kirmani, Amna, Rebecca Hamilton, Debora V. Thompson, and Shannon Lantzy. "Doing Well vs. Doing Good:The Differential Effect of Underdog Positioning on Moral and Competent Service Providers." Journal of Marketing, 81, Jan (2017): 103-117.

Hamilton, Rebecca, Debora V. Thompson, Zachary G. Arens, Simon J. Blanchard, Gerald Haubl, P. K. Kannan, Uzma Khan, Donald R. Lehmann, Margaret Meloy, Neal J. Roese, and Manoj Thomas. "Consumer Substitution Decisions: An Integrative Framework." Marketing Letters, 25, Sept (2014): 305-317.

Debora V. Thompson and Prashant Malaviya. "Consumer Generated Ads; Does Awareness of Co-Creation Help or Hurt Persuasion'." Jounal of Marketing, 77, May (2013): 33-47.

Thompson, Debora V. and Elise Chandon Ince. "When Disfluency Signals Competence: The Effect of Processing Difficulty on Perceptions of Service Agents." Journal of Marketing Research, 50, April (2013): 228-240.

Hamilton, Hamilton, Rebecca W., Rebecca Ratner, and Debora V. Thompson. "Outpacing Others: When Consumers Value Products Based on Relative Usage Frequency." Journal of Consumer Research, 37, April (2011): 1079-1094.

Thompson, Debora V. and Michael I. Norton. "The Social Utility of Feature Creep." Journal of Marketing Research, 48, June (2011): 555-565.

Thompson, Debora V., Rebecca W. Hamilton, and Petia Petrova. "When Mental Simulation Hinders Behavior: The Effects of Process-oriented Thinking on Decision Difficulty and Performance." Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (2009): 562-574.

Hamilton, Rebecca W. and Debora Viana Thompson. "Is There a Substitute for Direct Experience? Comparing Consumers' Preferences After Direct and Indirect Product Experiences." Journal of Consumer Research, 34, 4 (2007): 546.

Rust, Roland, Debora V. Thompson, and Rebecca W. Hamilton. "Defeating Feature Fatigue." Harvard Business Review, Feb . (2006): 98-107.

Thompson, Debora V. and Rebecca W. Hamilton. "The Effects of Information Processing Mode on Consumers’ Responses to Comparative Advertising." Journal of Consumer Research, 32, March (2006): 530-540.

Thompson, Debora V., Rebecca W. Hamilton, and Roland Rust. "Feature Fatigue: When Product Capabilities Become Too Much of a Good Thing,” Journal of Marketing Research." Journal of Marketing Research, 42, 4 (2005): 431-442.

Thompson, Debora V., Roland Rust, and Jeffrey Rhoda. "The Business Value of e-Government to Small Firms." International Journal of Service Industry Management, 16, 3/4 (2005): 385-407.

Articles in Books (1)

Rust, Roland; Thompson, Debora V.. "How Does Marketing Strategy Change in a Service-based World?." Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing: Dialog, Debate, and Directions, 381-392. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharp, 2006.