Robin Coulter, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
- Storrs CT UNITED STATES
- School of Business
Professor Robin Coulter is an expert in consumer behavior issues with strategic marketing implications.
Contact More Open optionsBiography
Professor Robin Coulter’s research focuses on consumer behavior issues with strategic marketing implications, with particular attention to global citizenship and cross-cultural consumer behavior, branding in developed and emerging markets, digital imaging and visualization in consumer research, and numerical cognition and pricing. Professor Coulter’s work has been published in marketing and social science journals, including Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Applied Psychology, International Journal for Research in Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Advertising, and Journal of Advertising Research .
Professor Coulter is Past President President of Academic Council for the American Marketing Association, and is an active member of the Association for Consumer Research. Included among Dr. Coulter’s consultancies are New York Life Investment Management, Procter and Gamble, McNeil Consumer Products, and Coca Cola.
Professor Coulter has taught consumer behavior and integrated marketing communications in the undergraduate program, and Market-Driven Management, Global Business Issues, and the Executive Management Project in the Executive M.B.A. program. Professor Coulter has taught socio-cultural aspects of consumer behavior, introduction to the marketing academy, and research methods in the Marketing Ph.D. program.
Areas of Expertise
Education
Pennsylvania State University
B.S.
University of Pittsburgh
M.B.A.
University of Pittsburgh
Ph.D.
Social
Media
Media Appearances
Why hundreds waited in line for hours for Trader Joe's, Whole Foods to open: 'Couldn’t wait another day'
Hearst Connecticut Media print
2026-02-19
Robin Coulter, a University of Connecticut professor emeritus whose research focuses on consumer behavior issues, said one reason some people stand in line to visit a new store is what she called the "early innovator or early adopter" mentality. "These are people who want to be able to say they are among the first to do something," Coulter said. "And I want to be able to talk about it with my friends."
Vineyard Vines to launch Target collection
Stamford Advocate online
2019-03-09
“It seems like an interesting and viable partnership,” said Robin Coulter, head of the marketing department in the University of Connecticut’s business school. “It appears that Vineyard Vines has done its due diligence in identifying a more mass-market retailer…”
Articles
The Fresh Start Mindset: Transforming Consumers’ Lives
Journal of Consumer Research2017 This article introduces the fresh start mindset, defined as a belief that people can make a new start, get a new beginning, and chart a new course in life, regardless of their past or present circumstances. With historical roots in American culture and neoliberalism, and with contemporary links to liquid modernity and global consumer culture, this mindset structures reasoning, experience, and everyday language, and guides behavior across self- and other-transformative consumption domains.
Cultural experiential goal pursuit, cultural brand engagement, and culturally authentic experiences: sojourners in America
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science2018 Our research uses an interpretive approach to explore the consumer journeys of sojourners, temporary residents of a new country, with attention to cultural experiential goal pursuit and cultural brand engagement. Depth interviews with students from nine countries studying in America document that home country access to American popular culture impacts cultural experiential goals; the temporary nature of sojourners’ stay engenders instrumental brand use (vs. brand attachment); and cultural brand engagement relies on indexical/iconic brand meanings inextricably tied to the desired cultural experience.
The myriad meanings of cultural identities: A response to commentaries on “consumer cultural identities”
International Marketing Review2019 The purpose of this paper is to provide the authors’ response to three commentaries (Batra and Wu, 2019; Papadopoulos, 2019; Westjohn and Magnusson, 2019) on Strizhakova and Coulter (2019), “Consumer cultural identities: local and global cultural identities and measurement implications,” International Marketing Review.
Consumer cultural identity: local and global cultural identities and measurement implications Authors
International Marketing Review2019 The purpose of this paper is to offer a framework for considering the interplay between local (national) and global (world-based) identities and consumption practices with attention to various conceptualizations and measurements of consumer cultural identity.
Crossing Bridges: Assembling Culture into Brands and Brands into Consumers' Global Local Cultural Lives
Journal of Consumer Psychology2019 Fournier and Alvarez (2019—this issue) and Batra (2019—this issue), respectively, offer interpretive and psychological perspectives on how brands acquire cultural meanings. In this commentary, we discuss the opportunities for leveraging these two perspectives, and use an assemblage theory lens to uncover the dynamics of how cultural models articulated through cultural myths, metaphors, ideologies, and cultural objects circulate through the brand assemblage and through the consumer assemblage.
