About

I’m Shreyans Goenka, a marketing professor at Virginia Tech and a researcher specializing in consumer ethics — the hidden moral logic that drives everyday purchasing decisions. My work sits at the intersection of psychology, politics, and the marketplace.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Economics
• Social psychology
• Psychology
• Business
• Law
• Law and economics
• Marketing
• Philosophy
• Industrial organization
• Cognitive psychology
• Natural resource economics
• Mathematics
• Neuroscience
• Econometrics

Selected publications

• Price Partitioning of Socio-Moral Surcharges

  Journal of Consumer Research · 2024 · 9 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Economics
  • Business
  • Natural resource economics

  Abstract Many companies are levying mandatory surcharges on products to raise funds for socio-moral causes (e.g., carbon-offset, living-wage, fair-trade, and sustainability surcharges). Should these surcharges be presented separately from the product price (i.e., partitioned pricing) or combined with the product price (i.e., all-inclusive pricing)? This research argues that partitioned pricing for socio-moral surcharges can backfire. When socio-moral surcharges are partitioned, consumers feel that the company is avoiding its own responsibility toward the cause, reducing intrinsic corporate social responsibility attributions and consequently leading to adverse consumer reactions. This theorization is specific to surcharges attached to socio-moral causes; the effects reverse for non-socio-moral surcharges. Further, we document three ways via which firms can alter consumer beliefs and attenuate negative reactions. These include approaches that signal that the firm is not seeking reputational benefits, that the firm is not avoiding responsibility, and by shifting consumers’ focus from the costs they have to bear to the benefits they accrue. Hence, this research presents implications for managers and policymakers seeking to incorporate socio-moral surcharges into product prices while mitigating consumer backlash.

  PublisherDOI

• Moral Motives in Consumption

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Moral Foundations Theory and Consumer Behavior

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Moral foundations theory and consumer behavior

  Journal of Consumer Psychology · 2024-06-10 · 17 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Ramos et al. ( Journal of Consumer Psychology , 2024) explain the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) and discuss its applicability to explain marketing persuasion, consumer emotions, and prosocial behavior. We concur with Ramos et al. but suggest that the scope for MFT in consumer behavior is much broader – it can be used to investigate heterogeneity in consumers' moral utility. Specifically, we discuss how MFT can be used to investigate heterogeneity in product preferences, consumers' financial choices, consumer reactions to brand activism, and market regulation. We conclude by discussing three important challenges of using MFT in consumer research – causal identification, discriminant validity, and scientific objectivity.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Moral Motives in Consumption

  Journal of the Association for Consumer Research · 2024-10-08 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The authors introduce the “Three Moral Motives Framework” to explain and predict consumers’ moral behaviors in the marketplace. The framework identifies three key motives—moral-beneficence, moral-self, and moral-duty—that shape when, how, and why consumers seek moral utility in their consumption choices. These motives may work together or in opposition, with varying sensitivities across individuals and contexts, influencing divergent moral decisions. The framework aims to reconcile conflicting findings in moral behavior literature and offers a unified approach to understanding consumer morality in the marketplace.

  PublisherDOI

• Enhancing Consumer and Planetary Well-Being by Consuming Less, Consuming Better

  Journal of Sustainable Marketing · 2024-06-19 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  The urgent need to address unsustainable consumption practices has become increasingly evident. While much traditional consumer behavior research serves to stimulate consumption, the focus needs to shift towards encouraging more sustainable consumption patterns. This commentary synthesizes insights from a roundtable discussion at the 2023 Society for Consumer Psychology Conference, which comprised an exploration of novel, creative, actionable, and theoretically sound avenues for getting people to consume less, consume better. The commentary tackles three essential questions: (1) What do we mean by consuming less, consuming better? (2) Who is/are responsible for such behaviors? (3) How do we get people to consume less, consume better? In doing so, it lays out several future research directions.

  PublisherDOI

• Partisan Media Sentiment Toward Artificial Intelligence

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Price Partitioning of Socio-Moral Surcharges

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Partisan Media Sentiment Toward Artificial Intelligence

  Social Psychological and Personality Science · 2023-09-14 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access

  Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming pervasive across society. However, its deployment appears to be a divisive issue. This research examines aversion to AI across the partisan divide. We analyze partisan media sentiment toward AI, a powerful driver of public opinion toward social issues. We conduct a text analysis of media articles on AI ( N = 7,840) from several liberal-leaning and conservative-leaning media outlets. The results demonstrate that liberal-leaning media show a greater aversion to AI than conservative-leaning media. Furthermore, a mediation analysis suggests that liberal-leaning media are more concerned with AI magnifying social biases in society than conservative-leaning media, which drives the partisan media differences. Moreover, the results also show that media sentiment toward AI became more negative after George Floyd’s death, an event that heightened sensitivity about social biases in society. Implications for how these partisan media differences can polarize public opinion and policymaker support toward AI are discussed.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The effect of firm size on perceived product healthiness

  Marketing Letters · 2023 · 3 citations

  • Business
  • Marketing
  • Industrial organization
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Manoj Thomas

  Cornell University

  13 shared

• Stijn M. J. van Osselaer

  Cornell University

  10 shared

• Sankar Sen

  Baruch College

  3 shared

• Mario Pandelaere

  Virginia Tech

  3 shared

• Angela Yi

  2 shared

• Katharina C. Husemann

  King's College London

  2 shared

• Shuili Du

  University of New Hampshire

  2 shared

• Rajesh Bagchi

  Virginia Tech

  2 shared

Education

• B.A.

  University of Pennsylvania

• Ph.D.

  Cornell University’s S.C. Johnson School of Management