Schumann Dissertation Award
This award is overseen by the SCP Educations and Training Chair. Winning this competition is the highest honor that a doctoral student can receive from SCP, the premier society for researchers in consumer psychology. The names of the winner and the runner-up are announced during the Awards Luncheon at the SCP Annual Conference.
A key goal of the competition is to provide feedback from accomplished scholars to improve the quality of dissertations in the area of consumer psychology. Therefore, the dissertation should not have been defended at the time it is submitted to SCP.
2026 Winner
Shemal Doshi
INSEAD
“Temporal Reframing, Labeling, Social Comparison and Their Influence on Environmental Decision Making”
Chair: Hilke Plassmann
2026 Honorable Mentions
Jianuo (Nora) Ma
Zhejiang University
“The Hedonic Bias: Consumers Perceive Hedonic Purchases
as Having Higher Carbon Footprints”
Chair: Lili Wang
Manaswini Acharya
Texas Tech University
“The Role of Product Salience in Marketing Stigmatized Products”
Chair: Mayukh Dass
Proposal Competition Submissions Open
To submit for the award, please fill out the form at the following link. Submissions are due October 15 each year.
Please note: in order to be eligible for an SCP award, you must be a current member of the Society.
2024 Competition Open Now
Learn more about the requirements, process of applying, and timeline for this prestigious award.
Past Winners
2025 Winner
Ekaterina Goncharova, University of Pennsylvania
“Financial Decision-Making Under Uncertainty”
2025 Honorable Mention
Archer Yue Pan, Cornell University
“Cultural heterogeneity in the Propensity to Adopt AI Products”
2024 Winner
Ozlem Tetik, London Business School
“Illness Severity and Consumers’ Experience of Side Effects”
2024 Honorable Mention
Ethan Milne, Ivey Business School, Western University
“Motivated to Attack: Consumer Aggression Against Brands and Other Consumers”
2023 Winner
Ana Carina Castagna, Universidade Nova De Lisboa
“Disarming the Scarcity Trap: How Perceptions of Resource Immutability Reduces Scarcity-Induced Present Bias”
2023 Honorable Mention
Shwetha Mariadassou, Stanford University
“The Effects of Information Modality on Decision-Making”
Previous Winners
“Speaking in Private: Privacy Expectations Depend on Communication Modality”
Johann Melzner, New York University
Advisors: Andrea Bonezzi and Priya Raghubir
“Solo and Joint Aspects of Consumer Behavior”
Theresa (Tess) Kwon, University of Pittsburgh
Advisor: Peggy Liu
“How Cultural Differences in Thinking Style Influence Compensatory Consumption”
Qin Wang, Arizona State University
Advisors: Monica Lisjak & Naomi Mandel
“Sharing Experiences in the Attention Economy: How Post-Consumption Attention Increases Experience Satisfaction”
Matthew Hall, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Advisors: Les Carlson, Jamie Hyodo
“Risk and Rivalry Promotions”
John Costello, Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University
Advisor: Rebecca Walker Reczek
“Blurring the Lines Between Human and Machine: Marketing Human-Like Machines and Machine-Like Humans”
Noah Castelo, Columbia University
Advisors: Bernd Schmitt & Donald Lehman
Christiline du Plessis, Erasmus University
Jennifer Zarzosa, New Mexico State University
John Christensen, University of Southern California