Avni M. Shah




Assistant Professor in Marketing 

University of Toronto

Email: avni.shah@rotman.utoronto.ca

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I am an Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Department of Management at the University of Toronto Scarborough, with a cross-appointment to the Marketing area at the Rotman School of Management and the Munk School of Global Affairs. Using field and laboratory data, I investigate how payment influences consumer decision-making and consumer well-being particularly in financial and health contexts. My research has covered a broad range of topics, such as looking at how paying with different forms of payment influence purchase behavior and how paying a surcharge on unhealthy food items influences unhealthy food consumption. My work has been published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Nexus, Journal of Urban Economics, Psychological Science, and the Journal of the Association of Consumer Research.

I earned my doctorate in Marketing at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and my bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College, double majoring in Psychological and Brain Sciences and Religion. Prior to beginning my career in academia, I worked as a research assistant at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, and was a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health. Prior to graduate school, I also found some time to fulfill a life goal of having a somewhat successful DJing business under the alias, DJ Lunchbox.