Michelle Barnhart

541-737-1455

michelle.barnhart@oregonstate.edu

Faculty

Michelle Barnhart

Overview

Background

Publications

Overview

Career Interests

Research areas: American gun culture, firearms consumption and policy, gun violence prevention, eldercare, use of credit/debt, and ethical (sustainable, humane, and/or socially responsible) consumption

Research interests: consumer culture theory, identity construction and negotiation, responsibilization, and market systems

Her research has been published in the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Business Research, the Journal of Marketing Management, and the Journal of Macromarketing.

Prior to her academic career, Professor Barnhart spent eight years in sales, customer service, and operations management in the personal emergency response industry, and two years as a research scientist in a molecular neurobiology lab.

Background

Education

University of Utah, David Eccles School of Business
Ph.D., Business Administration, August 2009
Major Discipline: Marketing

Dissertation: “Who Are You Calling Old? A Study of Old Age Construction and Value Creation in the Elderly Consumption Ensemble,” Co-chairs: Dr. Lisa Peñaloza, Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales du Nord, France; and Dr. Teresa Pavia, University of Utah

University of Colorado, Boulder
Leeds School of Business
Doctoral Program in Marketing, August 2004 – July 2006

Stanford University
Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences, 1994
Conferred with departmental honors

Experience

College of Business, Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331
September 2009 – present

Lifeline Systems, Inc. – Personal Response and Support Services
General Manager, Denver Regional Office, May 2001 – July 2004
Oversaw all functions of the regional office, including Sales, Customer Service, Marketing, Operations, Billing, and Government Contracts.

Major Accomplishments:
• Launched company-wide initiative which reduced the annual rate of customer cancellations by over 20%. Developed and delivered seminar modules to train national distribution channel on this initiative and other sales and marketing strategies.
• Consistently rated best presenter at national company workshops focusing on marketing, sales, and operational excellence.
• Created a new referral marketing process for the Denver office which was later adopted nationally.
• Increased return on sales of the Denver office from 30% to 44%.
Operations Manager, Denver Regional Office, August 1999 – May 2001

TelCARE Systems, Inc. – Personal Emergency Response Services
Operations Manager, May 1997 – August 1999
Marketing Assistant, May 1996 – May 1997

Veterans’ Administration Medical Center, Denver
Research Assistant, Molecular Neurobiology, August 1994 – May 1996
Designed and carried out experiments investigating possible causes of schizophrenia.

Service

Marketing Program Director

College of Business Promotion and Tenure Committee Chair

Honors & Awards

2008 Dissertation Proposal Award, Marketing and Society Special Interest Group, American Marketing Association “Who are You Calling Old? Negotiating Agency in the Elderly Consumption Ensemble”

2008 University of Nebraska Mittelstaedt Doctoral Symposium Presenter,
“Negotiating Meaning in the Elderly Consumption Ensemble”

2007 AMA Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium Fellow

Best Paper Award, Methods Track, 2007 Winter AMA Conference
“Rethinking Readiness: Development and Validation of a Reduced Form of the Technology Readiness Index” with Mark Ratchford

Gerald Hart Doctoral Research Fellowship, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado at Boulder, May – July 2006

2006 University of Houston Doctoral Symposium, discussant

Gerald Hart Doctoral Research Fellowship, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado at Boulder, May – July 2005

Abstract: In recent decades, U.S. “pro-gun” lobbying groups, politicians, courts, and market actors have sought to responsibilize U.S. consumers to use firearms to address the societal problem of crime. These responsibilization efforts center an interpretation of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms as an entitlement for individuals to engage in armed protection from criminals. Using interview and online discussion data, this research investigates consumers’ responses to responsibilization for this morally fraught set of behaviors, and the role of consumers’ various understandings of the right to bear arms in these responses. Findings show that acceptance of responsibilization is a matter of proportionality; consumers accept responsibilization for a proportion of specific armed protection scenarios and reject it for the remainder. Acceptance is determined by their appraisals of the morality of the responsibilization sub-processes (Giesler & Veresiu 2014). Consumers’ understanding of the constitutional right serves as a heuristic in these appraisals, with some understandings leading consumers to accept responsibilization across a much larger proportion of scenarios than others. Contributions include illustrating response to responsibilization as a proportionality; illuminating consumers’ active role in appraising responsibilizing efforts; and demonstrating how some consumers come to understand a responsibilized behavior as a moral entitlement.

Details