Kelly Herd

Associate Professor, Dean's Ackerman Scholar

Marketing

Education

Ph.D., University of Colorado at Boulder
B.S., Washington and Lee University

Areas of Expertise

Product Design
Creativity
Emotions

Biography

Marketing professor Kelly Herd’s research focuses primarily on creativity and product design as they relate to a variety of topics including social cognition, identity, and emotions. She is particularly interested in what motivates consumers to engage in aesthetic product design and how companies can better enable individuals to develop unique and effective solutions to fulfill their own needs and wants (e.g., customization) as well as those of the marketplace (e.g., crowdsourcing). Her research has been published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, and Journal of Consumer Psychology. She received both the 2019 UConn School of Business Innovation in Teaching Award and the 2021 UConn AAUP Innovation in Teaching Award. In 2022, she was named one of the 50 Best Undergraduate Business School Professors by Poets & Quants. She received Outstanding Reviewer Awards from the Journal of Marketing (2023) and the Journal of Marketing Research (2024).

Professor Herd holds a Ph.D. in Marketing from the University of Colorado. Prior to completing her Ph.D., she specialized in public relations and consumer research, developing marketing campaigns for clients including Toshiba, Disney, NBC, and Pepsi.

Featured Publications

Hock, Stefan J., Kristen Ferguson, and Kelly B. Herd, “The Mobile Giving Gap: Examining the Negative Impact of Smartphones on Donation Behavior,” Forthcoming, Journal of Consumer Psychology. Download now

Ferguson, Kristen and Kelly. B. Herd (2024), “The Influence of Creative Thinking on Consumer Embarrassment,” Forthcoming, Marketing Letters. Download now

Kim, Claire Heeryung*, Kelly B. Herd*, and H. Shanker Krishnan (2023), “The Creative Touch: The Role of Haptics on Creativity,” Marketing Letters, 34 (1), 113-24. Download now

Herd, Kelly B.*, Girish Mallapragada*, and Vishal Narayan* (2022), “Do Backer Affiliations Help or Hurt Crowdfunding Success?,” Journal of Marketing, 86 (5), 117-34. Download now

Kim, Tae Woo, Adam Duhachek, Kelly B. Herd, and Sunah Kim (2022), “Towards a Goal-based Paradigm of Contagion,” European Journal of Marketing, 56 (8), 2105-37. Download now

Herd, Kelly B.* and Ravi Mehta* (2019), “Head vs. Heart: The Effect of Objective versus Feelings-Based Mental Imagery on New Product Creativity,” Journal of Consumer Research, 46 (1), 36-52. Download now

Krishna, Aradhna*, Kelly B. Herd*, and Nilufer Z. Aydınoğlu* (2019), “A Review of Consumer Embarrassment as a Public and Private Emotion,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 29 (3), 492-516. Download now

Xu, Lidan, Ravi Mehta, and Kelly B. Herd (2019), “Look at Me! Or Don’t…: How Mere Social Presence Impacts Innovation Adoption,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 4 (3), 269-79. Download now

Krishna, Aradhna*, Kelly B. Herd*, and Nilufer Z. Aydınoğlu* (2015), “Wetting the Bed at Twenty-one: Embarrassment as a Private Emotion,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25 (3), 473-486. (Equal authorship). Download now

Moreau, C. Page, Leff Bonney and Kelly B. Herd (2011), “It’s the Thought (and the Effort) That Counts: How Customizing for Others Differs from Customizing for Oneself,” Journal of Marketing, 75 (September), 120-133. Download now

Moreau, C. Page, and Kelly B. Herd (2010), “To Each His Own? How Comparisons with Others Influence Consumers’ Evaluations of Their Self-Designed Products,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (February), 806-819. Download now