About

Suzanne B. Shu is the John S. Dyson Professor of Marketing at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management within the SC Johnson College of Business. Her research focuses on decision-making processes, including consumer self-control problems, consumption timing issues, and financial decisions such as retirement decumulation, annuities, and Social Security claiming. She has also worked on perceived fairness in financial products and applied behavioral economics to health-related behaviors, including medication adherence, mammogram screenings, weight loss programs, and colon cancer screenings. Shu has taught marketing and decision-making courses to MBA students at various institutions, including the University of Chicago, Southern Methodist University, INSEAD, and UCLA. She holds a PhD from the University of Chicago, a BS and master's degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University, and has held positions as an NBER faculty research fellow, a joint faculty appointment at UCLA Medical School, and a visiting scholar at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Her work contributes to understanding how behavioral insights can influence financial and health-related behaviors.

Research topics

• Marketing
• Business
• Economics
• Law
• Commerce
• Advertising
• Industrial organization
• Market economy

Selected publications

• The Annuity Puzzle Revisited: Barriers, Behavior, and Policy Paths to Lifetime Income

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Inflow neglect: Forecasting failures after stocks run out.

  Journal of Experimental Psychology General · 2026-03-19

  articleSenior author

  People frequently encounter dynamic systems that involve inflows, outflows, and accumulated stocks-whether within their own households (e.g., financial accounts, stocks of food or supplies) or in larger institutional settings (e.g., manufacturing inventory, government benefit accounts). In this research, we introduce a novel stock-flow reasoning error, inflow neglect, and argue that this error can lead to important misperceptions regarding future outflows. To study this reasoning, we first focus on the United States' Social Security trust funds, whose impending depletion generates significant attention due to implications for American retirees. In Experiments 1-3, we show participants information about the trust funds over time that focus on the stock (i.e., balance) or flows (i.e., tax revenue and benefits payments), finding that those who see flows presentations are significantly less likely to expect benefits to cease completely after depletion (i.e., hold zero-outflow beliefs). In Experiments 4a and 4b, we show that prompting participants to reflect on the continuity of inflows (i.e., by reminding them that they expect payroll taxes to continue) significantly reduces inflow neglect and zero-outflow beliefs. Experiment 5 replicates these results in a separate domain, illustrating the generalizability of inflow neglect and underscoring the efficacy of presentations and targeted questions that emphasize the flows. This research contributes both theoretically and practically, advancing the literature on stock-flow reasoning and highlighting how communications about particular components of dynamic systems may contribute to-or be used to remedy-misconceptions that outflows will cease after depletion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Increasing Hotel Loyalty Through Psychological Ownership

  Cornell Hospitality Quarterly · 2025-01-07 · 5 citations

  articleSenior author

  The hospitality industry has long emphasized guest satisfaction as key to building loyalty. However, in such a highly competitive and service-oriented market, interventions to increase satisfaction may often be too costly relative to their marginal impact on guest loyalty. This research proposes a new and potentially lower-cost avenue for increasing guest loyalty to the hotel: guests’ sense of ownership of their hotel rooms. An analysis of 14,689 online reviews on TripAdvisor, a naturalistic field experiment in a hotel ( N = 82), as well as two controlled lab simulation studies (combined N = 1,002) jointly demonstrate that increasing psychological ownership of a hotel room significantly increases guest loyalty to the hotel, independent of customer satisfaction. This work extends our current understanding of psychological ownership and customer loyalty by demonstrating how psychological ownership of a tangible service element can enhance brand loyalty via a mechanism that does not rely on changes in satisfaction. In doing so, we highlight the role of psychological ownership as an underexplored and cost-efficient driver of loyalty in hospitality settings.

  PublisherDOI

• How Fostering ?Room Ownership? Can Boost Guest Loyalty

  eCommons (Cornell University) · 2025-08-12

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  One goal often espoused by hotel operators is gaining guests? loyalty by delighting them. Strange as it sounds, however, delighting guests is table stakes in today?s saturated hospitality industry. As brands compete on ever finer margins of service and comfort, loyalty can no longer rest solely on satisfaction. Even as most hotel firms seek and achieve flawless execution, they cannot gain substantial differentiation. So what else moves the needle? A study recently published in the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly suggests a novel strategic lever: psychological ownership. In this research brief, we present the theoretical grounding of psychological ownership, summarize the empirical findings, and translate the insights into actionable strategies.

  Publisher

• Of Photographs, Souvenirs, and Ticket Stubs: When Do Consumers Desire Mementos During an Experience?

  Journal of the Association for Consumer Research · 2025-06-24

  articleSenior author

  Consumers often desire mementos of their experiential consumption, as reflected in common behaviors such as taking photos during a special event, purchasing souvenirs while on vacation, or keeping ticket stubs from a concert, but when do consumers desire mementos during an experience? This research examines the timing of the desire for mementos during an experience, and the conditions and motivations that prompt those memento timing decisions. We propose that the approaching end of an experience increases feelings of sadness and thus the desire for mementos at that time. However, for experiences that are easily repeatable, the approaching end of an experience does not increase sadness and the desire for mementos. We find support for our hypotheses across laboratory and field studies that encompass different experiences and involve consumers undergoing actual experiences. Together, these studies provide insight into the understudied question of when consumers desire mementos during an experience.

  PublisherDOI

• Association Between Sociodemographic Characteristics and Weight Loss in a Financial Incentive Intervention for Adults With Obesity Living in Low-Income Neighborhoods

  American Journal of Health Promotion · 2025-06-10

  article

  Purpose To evaluate the association between demographic characteristics and weight-loss in response to financial incentives designed using behavioral economics. Design Retrospective analysis of randomized clinical trial (RCT). Setting FIReWoRk RCT (NCT03157713), which found that financial incentives were more effective than provision of weight-management resources only for weight-loss. Subjects 668 adults with obesity (221 in resources-only group, 447 in incentive groups) living in low-income neighborhoods. Measures Demographic characteristics and weight-loss. Analysis Linear mixed-effects models with interaction terms to examine effect of incentives on weight-loss in different demographic groups. Results Mean age of participants was 47.69 years, 81.0% were women, 72.6% were Hispanic, and mean BMI was 37.95 kg/m 2 . Financial incentives increased percent weight loss at 6 months (difference in percent weight loss between financial incentive and resources-only group = −2.41%; 95% CI −3.23% to −1.58%). In fully adjusted models, participants who were Black lost less weight than participants who were White (difference in percent weight loss = 2.12%; 95% CI 0.25% to 3.99%). Differences in percent weight loss by sex, age, education and neighborhood income were absent. Models that tested for interactions between group assignment and percent weight loss did not demonstrate evidence of a heterogenous effect of incentives in sociodemographic subgroups. Conclusion Black participants in the FIReWoRk intervention lost less weight than White participants, but effectiveness of financial incentives generally did not vary significantly by sociodemographic characteristics. However, it remains important to evaluate potential impacts of financial incentive programs on health disparities.

  PublisherDOI

• When “Year” Feels Near: How Year Versus Length Framing Alters Time Perception and Consumer Decisions

  Journal of Marketing Research · 2025-11-10

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Time intervals can be framed either by a calendar year (e.g., “2015”) or by length (e.g., “ten years”), yet these ostensibly equivalent formats lead to systematically different judgments. Combining data from whiskey auctions with seven controlled experiments, the authors demonstrate that length framing elongates time perception compared with year framing, which they refer to as the year–length effect. As a result of changes in time perception, length framing increases the importance of time-related attributes in choice, leading to more favorable product evaluations in contexts where age enhances product value (e.g., whiskey evaluation) and to more negative evaluations in contexts where age reduces it (e.g., used goods). Process evidence implicates the logarithmic mental number line: Years with large nominal values occupy a compressed region of the line, relative to small length numerals. These findings offer practical guidance on how time framing can be used to shape time perception and customer value.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Correction: A pragmatic parallel arm randomized-controlled trial of a multi-pronged electronic health record-based clinical decision support tool protocol to reduce low-value antipsychotic prescriptions among older adults with Alzheimer’s and related dementias

  PLoS ONE · 2024-12-05

  erratumOpen access

  [This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0277409.].

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Discussing money with the one you love: How financial stress influences couples' financial communication

  Journal of Consumer Psychology · 2024-06-15 · 5 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract When managing joint finances, couples need to have candid conversations about money. But what happens when one partner is feeling financially stressed? Our research investigates this question, exploring how an individual's perception of their current financial situation impacts their willingness to discuss money with their partner. Across eight studies ( N = 8474), we found that when individuals experience high (vs. low) financial stress, they are less likely to communicate with their partner about finances due to greater anticipated conflict. The effect of financial stress on communication is attenuated when individuals do not anticipate conflict. Further, we demonstrate that viewing conflicts as solvable rather than perpetual increases the likelihood of engaging in financial communication with one's partner. These findings have notable implications for both individuals' financial well‐being and couples' relationship satisfaction.

  PublisherDOI

• Social Security Claiming Intentions: Psychological Ownership, Loss Aversion, and Information Displays

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2023-07-01 · 1 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  For many Americans the question of when to claim Social Security benefits is one of the most consequential financial decisions they will ever face. While acknowledging that individuals differ in terms of optimal timing for starting Social Security benefits, many economists argue that an average person would benefit from delaying claiming as long as they could. Yet this is not what average Americans do. Many more Americans claim as soon as possible, at age 62, rather than as late as possible, at age 70. Why? This paper focuses on individual differences in beliefs and values that influence Social Security claiming intentions. As expected from economic theory, individual differences in life expectations and degree of patience for later larger payouts relate to claiming intentions. In addition, however, we also find that individual differences in psychological ownership of one’s Social Security benefits and individual differences in degree of loss aversion are both significant predictors of Social Security claiming intentions. Further, we find that an “enriched” information display manipulation (nudge) that emphasizes longer-term consequences of late claiming leads to earlier, not later, claiming intentions, and that the size of this effect is related to individual differences in the degree of loss aversion.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Noah J. Goldstein

  University of California, Los Angeles

  25 shared

• John W. Payne

  19 shared

• Robert Zeithammer

  13 shared

• Kurt A. Carlson

  Georgetown University

  12 shared

• Marissa Sharif

  University of Pennsylvania

  12 shared

• Catherine A. Sarkisian

  VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System

  11 shared

• Folasade P. May

  UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center

  11 shared

• Joann Peck

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  10 shared

Awards & honors

• UCLA Anderson Dean's Prize (2017)