Thomas O'Guinn

Thomas O’Guinn is an American marketing professor and an expert in the area of branding and the sociology of consumer behavior, including how viewers create distorted views of consumption behavior and other consumers through media viewing. He co-founded the work on compulsive buying with Ronald J. Faber. He and Robin Tanner and Aerum Maeng were the first to demonstrate that consumers infer social class, income, and the worth of an object for sale simply by the level of crowding or social density in a store. He is the, Irwin Maier Distinguished Chair in Business and Professor of Marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also has an appointment in sociology at UW.