Sharaya M. Jones
Assistant Professor of Marketing
George Mason University
Welcome.
Sharaya M. Jones is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at George Mason University. Sharaya received her PhD in Marketing from the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder, and her bachelor's degree from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Her research has been published in Marketing Science and she currently has work under review at the Journal of Consumer Research. Sharaya is a consumer behavior researcher and focuses on topics such as joint consumption, decision making in social contexts, donation behavior, product innovation and idea generation, women-owned businesses, and the integration of technology in decision making.
Prior to joining the world of academia, Sharaya worked as a marketing manager for a medium-sized Toronto-based SaaS company.
Sharaya works in Fairfax and lives in Washington, DC.
Select Research Topics
Shared Consumption
People often consume experiences in groups. We join book clubs, attend music festivals, watch movies, and order pizza together. Despite that consumers often choose to share such experiences in groups, marketers and marketing researchers tend to focus on the individual consumer and neglect how groups may alter decisions. I explore how and why consumers make choices for shared consumption, the factors that influence these choices, and the consequences.
Idea Generation
Idea generation is an exercise in combination. Every product or service is made up of a combination of different elements (elements consist of features, attributes, analogies, or core components). While a lot of researchers and practitioners tout combinations that are novel, others assert that familiar combinations are best. Well, which is it? Looking at combinations of different kinds and different levels of complexity, Laura J. Kornish and I seek to answer this question.
Charitable Giving
When disaster strikes, consumers often lend a helping hand by making charitable donations. Although charities prefer cash donations and can efficiently manage them, consumers often give material goods, such as blankets for hurricane victims and food for the hungry. Lawrence E. Williams and I propose that consumers believe that material donations are more readily seen as candidate solutions to the problems consumers wish to address via donating. In other words, material donations better fit the schemas consumers hold about the causes they wish to help.