Research

How we consume
shapes who we become.

My research sits at the intersection of consumer culture, well-being, and the social forces that shape how people buy, assign meaning, and resist the pressures of modern market life.

I'm particularly interested in how consumers push back against dominant cultural scripts around time, productivity, and accumulation, and what that resistance reveals about what people actually value.

Areas of Inquiry

What I study
and why

Consumer Well-Being and Temporal Resistance

How does consumption affect people's sense of self, their relationships, and their quality of life? I'm particularly interested in how consumers resist dominant cultural scripts around time, productivity, and accumulation, drawing on counter-mythologies like hygge and slow living to reclaim a different relationship with modern market life.

Cause Marketing and Prosocial Behavior

I'm interested in the relationship between business purpose and consumer response. Past work has examined the interpersonal and dispositional antecedents of prosocial behavior, including generosity, empathy, and cause-brand alignment. Looking forward, I'm drawn to purpose-driven business as a genuine strategic orientation, exploring how brands that commit to broader societal goals can create value for consumers and communities while building commercially sustainable enterprises.

Marketing Pedagogy

What makes marketing education meaningful? My pedagogical interests center on fostering critical and interdisciplinary thinking, cultivating relevance, and teaching with sincerity. I'm drawn to questions about how students develop as whole people alongside their professional skills, how educators can protect space for human connection and judgment in an increasingly tech-powered world, and how the classroom itself can be a site of genuine inquiry rather than content delivery.

Publications

Peer-reviewed
scholarship

2026

Forthcoming

From Time is Money to Life is Hygge: How Counter-Mythologies Enable Consumer Temporal Resistance

Grace, S.C.

Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 11(3)

2025

Published

The Ripple Effect of Macromarketing Education: Examining Student Knowledge, Concern, Behavior, and Value Perception

Thyroff, A., Kilbourne, W.E., Rapert, M.I., Grace, S.C., & Siemens, J.C.

Journal of Macromarketing, 45(4), 591–606

2021

Published

The Generous Consumer: Interpersonal Generosity and Pro-Social Dispositions as Antecedents to Cause-Related Purchase Intentions

Rapert, M.I., Thyroff, A., & Grace, S.C.

Journal of Business Research, 132, 838–847

2021

Published

The Intermingling of Meanings in Marketing: Semiology and Phenomenology in Consumer Culture Theory

Grace, S.C.

AMS Review, 11(1–2), 70–80

2021

Published

Emotional Awareness in Time of Disruption: The Impact of Tolerance for Ambiguity, Worry, Perceived Stress, Helpful Communication, and Past Experience on Student Satisfaction

Grace, S.C., Mejia, J.M., Rapert, M.I., & Thyroff, A.

Marketing Education Review, 31(3), 226–240

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