Dr Thomas Robinson

About

Overview

What accounts for the success of nostalgic and futuristic television shows such as Stranger Things and The Expanse? Why is there an explosive growth in purchasing ancestry DNA tests and slow, sustainable fashion? Rapid change and crisis provide one explanation. Issues such as

artificial intelligence, robotics, ongoing wars, global pandemics, racial disparity, and climate change highlight how marketplace stakeholders are confronted daily with substantial changes. Giving rise to an acute awareness of “before” and “after,” change draws attention to the

progression of time as a sensemaking resource.

Time is a heterogeneous concept in consumer research. Researchers were initially inspired by economics to explore consumers’ time management and allocation strategies. Later researchers built on psychology to map timestyles or the ways in which consumers perceive and use time.

Recent work broadly examined time related to consumer choices and decisions (e.g., time inconsistency, time pressure, impatience, intertemporal choice). Researchers also focused on issues of timeflow, addressing how certain consumption activities can lead to perceived acceleration or deceleration of time, timework as a consumption resource, and how consumers switch between different types of time.

My research explores the role of time in consumption. Questions of interest could include:

• What are specific determinants of time perceptions and intertemporal preferences? This could relate to timing, pacing, sequencing of events.

• When is time considered versus neglected in consumer decision making?

• How does the duration of a customer experience impact consumers and their emotions?

• How do consumers relate to and integrate past and future versions of themselves in their current consumer identity projects? What implications does this have for their consumption?

• How do families or households collectively reimagine the past and the future through consumption?

• How do consumer movements negotiate the temporalities of technological developments and how does this relate to market legitimacy?

• How does time intersect with consumers’ social enactment of space or any physical environment?

• How do cultures, cosmologies, religion, or rituals shape consumer perceptions of time?

Qualifications

• PhD, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark, 2013 - September 2016

Employment

• Track Leader, Undergraduate Marketing Specialization, City, University London, United Kingdom, December 2018 - present

Languages

German (can read, write, speak, understand spoken)

Research students

2^ndsupervisor

• Chrysa Gkotsi, Research Student

Publications