Michelle Barnhart

Associate Professor
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Office: 541-737-1455

Austin Hall

Austin Hall 404

2751 SW Jefferson Way

2751 SW Jefferson Way
Corvallis, OR 97331

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At OSU
Affiliated with: 
College of Business
Research/Career Interests: 

Professor Barnhart’s research focuses on cultural norms, social groups, and individual identity as manifest in consumption activities. She has previously investigated these topics in the contexts of eldercare and Americans' use of credit/debt, and she is currently considering them in the contexts of employee wellness programs and ethical (sustainable, humane, and/or socially responsible) consumption. In a second stream of research, she investigates consumers' adoption of new technologies. Her research has been published in the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Business Research, and will soon be published in the Journal of Marketing Management (article in press). Professor Barnhart teaches classes in Personal Selling and Qualitative Marketing Research, and is the faculty advisor for the Marketing club, the Sales club, and Beta Gamma Sigma, the business honor society.

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. In her leisure time, Professor Barnhart enjoys spending time with her husband and dog, playing almost any sport that uses a ball, and hiking.  

Teaching Interests

Principles of Marketing
Marketing Research  
Personal Selling
Services Marketing

Beyond OSU
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

Employment: 

Assistant Professor of Marketing
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.

Honors and 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

Service: 

Marketing Club Advisor - 2013-2014  

http://business.oregonstate.edu/students/organizations/ama

My Publications

Journal Articles


A. Huff, Barnhart, M., McAlexander, B., and McAlexander, J., “Addressing the Wicked Problem of American Gun Violence: Consumer Interest Groups as Macro-social Marketers”, Journal of Macromarketing.

M. Barnhart and Mish, J., “Hippies, Hummer Owners, and People Like Me: Stereotyping as a Means of Reconciling Ethical Consumption Values with the DSP”, Journal of Macromarketing, vol. 37, no. 1, 2017.

M. Barnhart, Huff, A., and Cotte, J., “Like a Member of the Family: Including and Excluding Paid Caregivers in Performances of Family”, Journal of Marketing Management, vol. 30, no. 15-16, pp. 1680-1702, 2014.

M. Barnhart and Penaloza, L., “Who Are You Calling Old? Negotiating Old Age Identity in the Elderly Consumption Ensemble”, Journal of Consumer Research, 2013.

M. Ratchford and Barnhart, M., “Development and Validation of the Technology Adoption Propensity (TAP) Index”, Journal of Business Research, vol. 65, no. 8, pp. 1209-1215, 2012.

L. Penaloza and Barnhart, M., “Living U.S. Capitalism: The Normalization of Credit/Debt”, Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 743-762, 2011.

C. Breese, Adams, C., Logel, J., Drebing, C., Rollins, Y., Barnhart, M., Sullivan, B., DeMasters, B., Freedman, R., and Leonard, S., “Comparison of the regional expression of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor alpha-7 mRNA and I-125-alpha-bungarotoxin binding in human postmortem brain”, Journal of Comparative Neurology, vol. 387, no. 3, pp. 385-398, 1997.

Conference Papers


M. Barnhart and Penaloza, L., “Negotiating Agency in the Elderly Consumption Ensemble”, in Advances In Consumer ResearchAssociation for Consumer Research, 2009, vol. 36.

M. Barnhart and Ratchford, M., “Rethinking Readiness: Development and Validation of a Reduced Form of the Technology Readiness Index”, in Proceedings of the American Marketing Association Winter Conference 2007, 2007.

Presentations


M. Barnhart, Huff, A., McAlexander, J., and McAlexander, B., “Consumers’ Assemblages of Fear and Safety with Firearms: Obstacles to Addressing Gun Violence in an Armed America”, Consumer Culture Theory Conference 2017. Anaheim, CA, 2017.

A. Huff and Barnhart, M., “Assembling Safety in an Armed America”, Oregon Marketing Research Symposium. Eugene, Oregon, 2017.

M. Barnhart and Huff, A., “Assembling Safety in an Armed America”, Speaker Series. Melbourne, Australia, 2017.

M. Barnhart, Huff, A., McAlexander, J., and McAlexander, B., “Sisyphus and the American Socio-political Industrial Gun Complex: How Gun Violence Prevention Groups Keep Pushing the Rock”, Marketing and Public Policy Conference. San Luis Obispo, CA, 2016.

M. Barnhart, “Round Table panelist - The future of research in eldercare”, North American Association for Consumer Research Conference. New Orleans, 2015.

A. Huff and Barnhart, M., “(Re)Assembling Family: An Examination of How Senior Families 'Do' Family”, Consumer Culture Theory 2015 Conference. University of Arkansas, 2015.

M. Barnhart, “Marketing Services to Older Consumers”, Western Regional International Health Conference. Eugene, OR, 2015.

J. Gentry, Phillips, L., and Barnhart, M., “Everyday Consumption and Perceptions of Oldness: Barnhart and Penaloza Extended”, Association for Consumer Research Latin American Conference 2014. Guadalajara, Mexico, 2014.

M. Barnhart and Ratchford, M., “A Multivariate Analysis of Pre-acquisition Drivers of Technology Adoption”, Marketing Science Conference. Atlanta, GA, 2014.

M. Barnhart and Huff, A., “In and Out: Paid Caregivers as Members of the Family..kind of”, Consumer Culture Theory Conference. Helsinki, Finland, 2014.

M. Barnhart and Penaloza, D. Lisa, “Who Are You Calling Old? Old Age Identity Negotiation in the Elderly Consumption Ensemble”, Consumer Culture Theory Conference. 2008.

M. Barnhart and Penaloza, L., “Negotiating Agency in the Elderly Consumption Ensemble”, North American Association for Consumer Research. San Francisco, CA, 2008.

M. Barnhart and Penaloza, D. Lisa, “Living Capitalism: Consumer Identity and Consciousness in Transformational Consumer Research”, Conference on Transformative Consumer Research. Hanover, NH, 2007.

M. Barnhart and Ratchford, M., “Rethinking Readiness: Development and Validation of a Reduced Form of the Technology Readiness Index”, Winter Educators' Conference. San Diego, CA, 2007.