Aparna A. Labroo

Aparna A. Labroo is an associate professor of marketing at University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. She has a PhD in Marketing from Cornell University, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and has previously worked in advertising and brand management. She teaches a course on Marketing Strategy and an elective on Integrated Marketing Communications to MBA students and a Readings Seminar to doctoral students at the GSB. Her research has been published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and in Motivation and Emotion.

Labroo's research interests focus on two areas. The first investigates aspects of consumer information processing and advertising context effects, using experimental paradigms. In one set of studies, she reports that prior exposure to the advertising of a brand from one product category can lead to positive externalities that enhance consumers' judgment of brands from a different category by making those brands come to the consumers mind more easily. She finds that this effect is moderated by the compatibility of goals between the two products; liking of products from different categories increases only when they are seen as sharing the same goal. This research has implications for advertisers who often negotiate restrictions on the number of ads from competing brands appearing in close proximity to their own ads, but are less concerned about the advertising effects of products from different categories.

In a related set of studies, she investigates how the use of unusual visual identifiers (e.g., images of frogs or feet) that have nothing to do with the product (e.g., wines) influence evaluation and choice of the product. She finds that the use of such an identifier can increase choice of the product even though the identifier does not provide information relating to the product it can cue other important aspects of a consumer's life.

Labroo's second stream of research investigates the effect of emotions on self regulation and on the choices that people make. She investigates issues relating to how a positive (vs. a negative) mood might facilitate goal adoption and self control, and how beliefs about the transience of emotion might moderate these effects. She also investigates why specific goals evoked by emotions might lead to a preference for some outcomes over others. The research has implications for public policy and improving subjective wellbeing of consumers.