2016 Ph.D., Marketing (expected) Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta

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1 ADITI BAJAJ Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology, 800 West Peachtree, Atlanta GA, July 13, 2015 EDUCATION 2016 Ph.D., Marketing (expected) Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta 2006 M.S., Integrated Marketing Communications Specialization: Direct, database and e-commerce marketing Medill School, Northwestern University, Chicago 2002 One Year Diploma in Advertising and Marketing Xavier Institute of Communications, St. Xavier s College, Mumbai, India 2001 Bachelor of Business Management Mohan Lal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, India RESEARCH INTERESTS Consumer Brand Relationships, Visual Information Processing, Psychology of Design, Gender Identities, Consumer Self-Concept RESEARCH UNDER REVIEW Bajaj, Aditi, and Samuel D. Bond, Beyond Beauty: Design Symmetry and Brand Personality, under review at Journal of Consumer Psychology (First essay of my dissertation). Bajaj, Aditi, and Sara Loughran Dommer, Gender Differences in Responses to Facial Imagery in Advertising: Why Faces Make Women Feel Less Connected to the Brand, under review at Journal of Consumer Research (Second essay of my dissertation). RESEARCH IN PROGRESS (See Appendix for selected abstracts) Bajaj, Aditi, and Samuel D. Bond, The Impact of Mindset on Aesthetic Preferences, (2 studies completed, 2 planned), manuscript intended for submission to Journal of Consumer Research. 1

2 Bajaj, Aditi, The Role of Past Feared-Self in Avoiding Future Feared-Self, (2 studies completed, 2 planned), manuscript intended for submission to Journal of Consumer Research. Bajaj, Aditi, The Role of Agency-Communion Orientation in Predicting Future Feared-Selves, (1 study completed, 3 planned), manuscript intended for submission to Journal of Consumer Research. BOOK CHAPTERS Bajaj, Aditi, and Samuel D. Bond. Beyond Beauty: Design Symmetry and Brand Personality, The Psychology of Design: Creating Consumer Desire. Ed. Rajeev Batra, Diann Brei, and Colleen Seifert. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc. (Forthcoming). DISSERTATION Title: Two Essays on the Impact of Visual Brand Imagery on Consumers Brand Perceptions and Brand Relationships Chair: Samuel D. Bond Committee Members: Samuel D. Bond, Sara Loughran Dommer, Ryan Hamilton (Emory University), Jeffery R. Parker (Georgia State University), Rajeev Batra (University of Michigan) Proposal Defended: 5/21/15 Summary: Marketers have long recognized the role of visual brand elements (logos, packaging, advertisements etc.) in effective branding. Firms often devote sizeable resources to the design of visual elements that will help to clearly identify and differentiate their brands. Among consumer researchers, there has been growing interest and research in understanding how the design of visual brand elements influences consumer judgment and behavior. The majority of research in this area has focused on aesthetic beauty i.e., the perceptual attractiveness of a visual design. A consistent principle emerging from such research is that positive consumer aesthetic response predicts various desirable outcomes, including brand liking and choice. In my dissertation, I am concerned neither with the manner in which visual brand elements lead to a positive or negative affective response, nor with the aesthetic influence that the design of these elements exerts. Instead, I examine the less frequently posed questions of whether and how the design of visual brand elements affect brand personality perceptions and create or enhance self-brand connections. My two essays are linked by the idea that the design of visual brand elements affect the personal meaning of a brand to the consumer. As a result, marketers should systematically choose the design visual brand elements to communicate and strengthen their brand s identity. My first essay examines the role played by symmetry in the design of visual brand elements. Although prior research in aesthetics has established that visual symmetry generates a positive affective response, we propose that symmetry can often play an important additional role, by affecting consumer perceptions regarding brand personality. Results of five experiments reveal that asymmetry in visual brand elements is associated by consumers with brand excitement, and that this effect is driven by the experience of subjective arousal. Together, these findings demonstrate that visual symmetry plays an important but nuanced role in the communication of brand identity. 2

3 My second essay demonstrates that facial imagery in advertisements leads to lower self-brand connection among female, but not male, consumers. Using literature on facial imagery processing and attention, we argue that faces in advertisements preferentially recruit attentional resources and women, who allocate more attention to faces than men, find themselves unable to engage in mental simulation. We find that because women engage in less visualization of themselves using the brand, they subsequently feel less connected to the brand. These results not only offer insights into how gender differences in attention paid to faces affect responses to facial imagery in advertising, but also inform theories on how selective processing of informational cues such as faces impairs mental simulation. REFEREED CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS AND POSTERS Bajaj, Aditi and Samuel D. Bond (2014), Beyond Beauty: Design Symmetry and Brand Personality, Association for Consumer Research, North American Conference, Baltimore, MD. Bajaj, Aditi and Samuel D. Bond (2014), Design Symmetry Influences Perception of Brand Personality, Association for Psychological Science, Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA. Bajaj, Aditi and Samuel D. Bond (2014), Beyond Beauty: Design Symmetry and Brand Personality, 33rd Annual Advertising and Consumer Psychology Conference: The Psychology of Design Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. Bajaj, Aditi and Samuel D. Bond (2011), The Use of Logo Design to Convey Brand Personality, Society for Consumer Psychology, Annual Conference, Las Vegas, NV. Bajaj, Aditi and Samuel D. Bond (2011), The Use of Logo Design to Convey Brand Personality, Association for Consumer Research, North American Conference, St. Louis, MO. HONORS AND AWARDS AMS Foundation Doctoral Consortium Fellow, University of Colorado-Denver, 2015 AMA Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium Fellow, Northwestern University, 2014 Graduate Fellowship, Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology, Nominated for Georgia Tech President s Fellowship, 2011 Best Student Award from Xavier s Institute of Communications for Academic Excellence, TEACHING EXPERIENCE Complete Course Instruction (Santa Clara University) Consumer Analytics (Executive MBA), Spring 2016 Complete Course Instruction (Georgia Institute of Technology) Consumer Behavior (undergraduate), Fall 2014 (2 sections) 3

4 - Instructor Rating: 4.8 / 5.0 Graduate Teaching Assistant (Georgia Institute of Technology) Consumer Behavior (undergraduate and MBA), Spring 2013, Spring 2014 and Spring 2015 Marketing Management (MBA), Spring 2014 TEACHING INTERESTS Introduction to Marketing, Marketing Communications, Marketing Research, Strategic Brand Management, Consumer Behavior, International Marketing, Direct and Database Marketing. PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE Graduate Research Assistant, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Palo Alto, CA March 2010 to December 2010 Bajaj, Aditi and Wesley Hartmann, A Cross-cultural Perspective on the Relationship between Nonfunctional Brand Attributes and Product Categories. (Working Paper). In this paper we seek to determine whether there are any systematic differences in perceptions of brands from the same category on brand attributes across different markets. Insights Manager, Landor Associates (A WPP Company), San Francisco, CA, March 2007 to July 2010 Used Brand Asset Valuator (BAV), a database of consumer perception of brands based on 400,000 consumers in 48 countries. Served as internal analytic lead across functional departments of Landor. Collaborated with Landor s Strategy and Design teams in the development of client proposals. Partnered with external research suppliers in designing and analyzing consumer surveys. DOCTORAL COURSEWORK Marketing, Cognition, and Methods Marketing Theory Consumer Behavior (Emory) Marketing Strategy Empirical Modeling (Emory) Social Psychology Individual Behavior in Organizations Ajay Kohli Ryan Hamilton Goutam Challagalla Doug Bowman Leslie DeChurch Cindy Zapata 4

5 Discrete Choice Econometrics Research Design Special Problems - Regression Advanced Research Methods Multivariate Statistics Industrial Organization Psychology Cognitive Psychology ACADEMIC SERVICE Patrick McCarthy Phillip Ackerman Lawrence James Lawrence James James Roberts Ruth Kanfer Eric Schumacher Ad Hoc Reviewing Association for Consumer Research Conference Society for Consumer Psychology Conference The American Marketing Association Conference Professional Memberships American Marketing Association (AMA) Association of Consumer Research (ACR) Society of Consumer Psychology (SCP) American Psychological Association (APA) REFERENCES Dr. Samuel D. Bond Dr. Sara Loughran Dommer Associate Professor Assistant Professor 800 West Peachtree 800 West Peachtree Scheller College of Business Scheller College of Business Georgia Institute of Technology Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, Ga Atlanta, Ga sam.bond@scheller.gatech.edu sara.dommer@scheller.gatech.edu Dr. Ajay Kohli Professor of Marketing Gary T. and Elizabeth R. Jones Chair 800 West Peachtree Scheller College of Business Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, Ga ajay.kohli@scheller.gatech.edu 5

6 APPENDIX: SELECTED ABSTRACTS Title: The Impact of Mindset on Aesthetic Preferences Decision making scholars distinguish between two general processing mindsets: 1) a concrete mindset, characterized by detail-oriented or attribute-level processing, and 2) an abstract mindset, characterized by holistic, schematic, or conceptual. Prior work in this area has shown that a more abstract mindset broadens perceptual attention by facilitating global, configural processing while a more concrete conceptual representation narrows perceptual attention by facilitating local, featural processing. In my research, I predict and demonstrate a counter-intuitive result whereby consumers with a more concrete (vs. abstract) mindset are more likely to attend to properties such as symmetry, and to form impressions of the brand based on those properties. Title: The Role of Past Feared-Self in Avoiding Future Feared-Self This research examines how the presence of a past feared-self (e.g., being overweight in the past) in the same category as a future feared-self (e.g., becoming overweight in the future) affects motivation to avoid it. Based on research on psychological distance theory, I predict and demonstrate an ironic outcome whereby consumers who have experienced a feared-self in the past are more afraid of experiencing that self again in the future, but are also less motivated to avoid it. Study 1 replicates prior research and shows that the motivation to avoid a future feared-self is significantly predicted by its availability, accessibility and the extent to which its avoidance is perceived as under one s control. Study 2 shows that the presence of a past feared-self makes the future feared-self feel less psychologically distant. I am currently collecting data for a third study which examines how psychological closeness to a feared-self increases the intensity of self-reported fear and adversely affects the motivation to avoid that feared self. Title: The Role of Agency-Communion Orientation in Predicting Future Feared-Selves This research explored how males agentic and females communal values might affect the nature of their future-feared selves and motivations to avoid it. Agency emphasizes self-confidence, competence, and mastery, while community accentuates maintaining social connections and interpersonal harmony. I anticipate that feared selves among women are associated more with communion motives such as social separation and connection, whereas feared-selves among men are associated more with agentic motives such as achievement and differentiation from others. 6