Portrait of Dr Thomas Robinson

Dr Thomas Robinson

Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Associate Dean of Student Experience

Bayes Business School, Faculty of Management

Contact

Visit Thomas Robinson

Room BR4042, Bunhill Row

Postal address

City St George's, University of London
Northampton Square
London
EC1V 0HB
United Kingdom

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, Sep 2013 – Sep 2016

Employment

  • Track Leader, Undergraduate Marketing Specialization, City, University London, Dec 2018 – present

Languages

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

Research students

2nd supervisor

Publications

Chapters (4)

  1. In Gollnhofer, J., Hofstetter, R. and Tomczak, T. (Eds.), (2024). Elgar Encyclopedia of Consumer Behavior. In Edward Elgar Publishing. ISBN 978-1-80392-626-1.
  2. Robinson, T. (2024). Legitimacy. In Gollnhofer, J.F., Hofstetter, R. and Tomczak, T. (Eds.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Consumer Behaviour Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
  3. Veresiu, E., Robinson, T. and Babic-Rosario, A. (2021). The longstanding obsession with nostalgic consumption - Unpacking the past and future of marketing and consumer research on nostalgia. In Jacobsen, M.H. (Ed.), Intimations of Nostalgia: Multidisciplinary Explorations of an Enduring Emotion Bristol: Bristol University Press. ISBN 978-1-5292-1476-5.
  4. Derek Robinson, T. (2015). Chronos and Kairos: Multiple Futures and Damaged Consumption Meaning. Research in Consumer Behavior (pp. 129–154). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-1-78560-323-5.

Conference papers and proceedings (13)

  1. Robinson, T. and Rich, M. (2019). Internationalising Higer Education: Designs for a Cultural Management Pedagody. Learning at City 3 July, Northampton Square, City University.
  2. Robinson, T., Babic-Rosario, A. and Wiertz, C. (2019). Trust and Risk in Robot Services - Temporality in Technology Acceptance. 48th EMAC Annual Conference 28-31 May, University of Hamburg.
  3. Lundahl, O. and Robinson, T. (2019). Voluntary hysteresis in food consumption and in the mobilisation of power – When Jay Z and Beyoncé went vegan. EMAC: European Marketing Academy 28-31 May, Hamburg.
  4. Robinson, T., Babic-Rosario, A. and Wiertz, C. (2019). Pre-Consumption of Service Robots: The Role of Narrated Assemblages in Experiential Control. 10TH EIASM INTERPRETIVE CONSUMER RESEARCH WORKSHOP 9-10 May, Lyon, France.
  5. Robinson, T. and Lundahl, O. (2019). Voluntary Hysteresis in Food Consumption. 10TH EIASM INTERPRETIVE CONSUMER RESEARCH WORKSHOP 9-10 May, Lyon, France.
  6. Veresiu, E., Babic-Rosario, A. and Robinson, T.D. (2018). Nostalgiacising: A Performative Theory of Nostalgic Consumption. Association for Consumer Research 11-14 October, Dallas, Texas.
  7. Robinson, T. and Arnould, A. (2018). Against Flowsterism: Sticky Mobility in Global Consumer Identity Making. Consumer Culture Theory, 2018 28 Jun 2018 – 1 Jul 2018, Odense, Denmark.
  8. Robinson, T., Veresiu, E. and Babic-Rosario, A. (2018). Reflective Nostalgia in Post-Socialist Cartoon Consumption: Rethinking the Temporal Dynamics of a Consumable Past. Consumer Culture Theory 28 Jun 2018 – 1 Jul 2018, Odense, Denmark.
  9. Robinson, T. and Arnould, E. (2018). Energy/Technology: ‘En-gauging’ Consumer Culture. EACR 21-23 June, Ghent, Belgium.
  10. Robinson, T. and Arnould, E. (2018). Time/Geography: ‘Anticiplacement’ in Consumer Mobility. EACR 21-23 June, Ghent, Belgium.
  11. Robinson, T. and Chelekis, J. (2017). Nesting Hope: Interpretation and Context in Consumer Emotion in special session: Special Session: Contextualizing Hope: The Materiality and Practice of Hope. Consumer Culture Theory, 2017 9 Jul 2017 – 12 May 2019, Disneyland California.
  12. Robinson, T. (2017). Consumer Futurescapes: Cultural Imagination and Sustainable Energy Technology. Consumer Culture Theory, 2017 9 July, Disneyland, California.
  13. Robinson, T.D. and Chelekis, J.A. (2016). Dying to Consume: Marketing and the Existentialization of Sustainability. doi:10.1108/s0885-211120160000018014

Journal articles (5)

  1. Robinson, T.D. and Veresiu, E. (2025). Timing Legitimacy: Identifying the Optimal Moment to Launch Technology in the Market. Journal of Marketing, 89(3), pp. 136–153. doi:10.1177/00222429241280405.

    [publisher’s website]

  2. Robinson, T.D., Veresiu, E. and Babić Rosario, A. (2022). Consumer Timework. Journal of Consumer Research, 49(1), pp. 96–111. doi:10.1093/jcr/ucab046.

    [publisher’s website]

  3. Robinson, T.D. and Veresiu, E. (2021). Advertising in a Context Harm Crisis. Journal of Advertising, 50(3), pp. 221–229. doi:10.1080/00913367.2021.1925604.

    [publisher’s website]

  4. Robinson, T.D. and Arnould, E. (2020). Portable technology and multi-domain energy practices. Marketing Theory, 20(1), pp. 3–22. doi:10.1177/1470593119870226.

    [publisher’s website]

  5. Murray, J.B., Brokalaki, Z., Bhogal-Nair, A., Cermin, A., Chelekis, J., Cocker, H. … Zuniga, M.A. (2019). Toward a processual theory of transformation. Journal of Business Research, 100, pp. 319–326. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.12.025.

    [publisher’s website]

Thesis/dissertation

  1. Robinson, Time and Culture in Consumer Behaviour: Framing the Future Through Technology (Routledge, Forthcoming 2019). (PhD)