Stephen Spiller

Associate Professor of Marketing and Behavioral Decision Making, Director of Behavioral Lab

“We’re always aiming to better understand how consumers see the world.”

stephen.spiller@anderson.ucla.edu

Gold Hall, B-416

Areas of Expertise:

Behavioral Decision Theory
Consumer Behavior
Consumer Financial Decision Making
Intertemporal Choice
Planning
Psychology of Money

About

Biography

Stephen Spiller is an Associate Professor of Marketing and Behavioral Decision Making at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where he has been on the faculty since 2011. In his research, he examines the psychology of fundamental economic concepts. This includes how and when people consider their opportunity costs, how they plan for the future, how they reason about product differentiation, and how they think about stocks versus flows. He also works to translate and disseminate best practices in data analysis and reporting for behavioral researchers. Professor Spiller’s work has been published in leading journals including Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Psychological Science, and Journal of Consumer Psychology. He received the Eric and E Juline Faculty Excellence in Research Award from UCLA Anderson in 2018, was a 2017 MSI Young Scholar, and was a finalist for the Journal of Marketing Research’s William F. O’Dell Award in 2018. Stephen received his PhD in marketing from Duke University in 2011 and his BA in psychology and economics from the University of Virginia in 2006.

Education

Ph.D. Business Administration, 2011, Duke University

B.A. Economics and Psychology, with highest distinction, 2006, University of Virginia

Publications

Spiller, Stephen A., Nicholas Reinholtz, and Sam J. Maglio (accepted in manuscript). “Judgments Based on Stocks and Flows: Different Presentations of the Same Data Can Lead to Opposing Inferences,” Management Science.

Spiller, Stephen A. and Lena Belogolova (in press). “On Consumer Beliefs about Quality and Taste,” Journal of Consumer Research.

Simon, Dan, and Stephen A. Spiller (in press). “The Elasticity of Preferences,” Psychological Science.

Carlin, Bruce, Li Jiang, and Stephen A. Spiller (in press). “Millennial-Style Learning: Search Intensity, Decision-Making, and Information-Sharing,” Management Science.

Greenberg, Adam Eric and Stephen A. Spiller (2016). “Opportunity Cost Neglect Attenuates the Effect of Choices on Preferences,” Psychological Science, 27 (1), 103-113.

McClelland, Gary H., John G. Lynch, Jr., Julie R. Irwin, Stephen A. Spiller, and Gavan J. Fitzsimons (2015). “Median Splits, Type II Errors, and False Positive Consumer Psychology: Don’t Fight the Power,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25 (4), 679-689.

Spiller, Stephen A., Gavan J. Fitzsimons, John G. Lynch, Jr., and Gary H. McClelland (2013). “Spotlights, Floodlights, and the Magic Number Zero: Simple Effects Tests in Moderated Regression,” Journal of Marketing Research, 50 (2), 277-88.

Dalton, Amy N. and Stephen A. Spiller (2012), “Too Much of a Good Thing: The Benefits of Implementation Intentions Depend on the Number of Goals,” Journal of Consumer Research, 39 (3), 600-14.

Mick, David G., Stephen A. Spiller, and Anthony J. Baglioni (2012), “A Systematic Self-Observation Study of Consumers’ Conceptions of Practical Wisdom in Everyday Purchase Events,” Journal of Business Research, 65 (7), 1051-59.

Spiller, Stephen A. (2011), “Opportunity Cost Consideration,” Journal of Consumer Research, 38 (4), 595-610. Lead article.

Lynch, John G., Jr., Richard G. Netemeyer, Stephen A. Spiller, and Alessandra Zammit (2010), “A Generalizable Scale of Propensity to Plan: The Long and the Short of Planning for Time and for Money,” Journal of Consumer Research, 37 (1), 108-28.

Working Papers

A Theory of Slack: Perceived Resource Supply and Demand in Intertemporal Choice. With John Lynch and Gal Zauberman.

How Does the Perceived Value of a Medium of Exchange Depend on Its Set of Possible Uses? With Dan Ariely.