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Sara Loughran Dommer

Doctoral Candidate in Marketing

Sara Loughran Dommer

E-mail: sldommer@katz.pitt.edu
Download Curriculum Vita

Degrees

  • Ph.D. in Marketing, University of Pittsburgh, expected 2012
  • B.S. with Honors in Marketing, Pennsylvania State University, 2005

Profile

Sara joined the doctoral program at the University of Pittsburgh in the fall of 2007.

Her research examines how people's self-concepts, social identities, and interpersonal relationships influence consumer behavior. Her primary research interests focus on the use of brands as vehicles of identity expression: Who does it? When and why do they do it? What are the larger implications of doing it? Her dissertation examines the motivations underlying consumers' use of brands to express identity (such as self-discrepancy and differentiation), individual differences and circumstantial factors that moderate such effects, and the larger implications of using brands to express identity.

Working Papers

Dommer, Sara Loughran, Vanitha Swaminathan, and Rohini Ahluwalia, "Blending In by Standing Out? The Paradox of Self-Differentiating with Brands to Signal a Desire to Belong"

Dommer, Sara Loughran and Vanitha Swaminathan, "Why Sellers and Buyers See Things Differently: Identity Self-Expression and Gender Differences in the Endowment Effect"

Dommer, Sara Loughran, Vanitha Swaminathan, and Zeynep Gürhan-Canli, "Who Forgives When Companies Err? Applying Attachment Theory to Explain Consumer Responses to Company Transgressions"

Dommer, Sara Loughran and Nicole Verrochi Coleman, "Closing the Gap: Lowering Self-Discrepancy with Brands, Relationships, and Cheating"

Awards and Honors

  • 2011 Sheth Doctoral Consortium Fellow
  • 2010 Outstanding Doctoral Student Teaching Award
  • 2010 Best Doctoral Student Contribution Award, 2010 International Consumer Brand Relationship Colloquium
  • 2009 Haring Symposium Fellow, Indiana University
  • 2007- Doctoral Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh
  • 2007-2008 Marketing Research Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh
  • 2005 Beta Gamma Sigma
  • 2001-2005 Schreyer Honors Scholar, Pennsylvania State University