Marketing and Consumer Studies Prof in the News
March 29, 2012 - In the News
Research by Prof. Karen Finlay of the College of Management and Economics was featured in an article in The New Yorker this week.
The article tells the story of casino and hotel designer Roger Thomas, whose designs are known for exceptional opulence. Finlay’s research on the behaviour of gamblers supports the psychological assumptions incorporated in Thomas’s designs — gamblers spend more in venues where they experience, in Finlay’s terms, mental “restoration.”
Finlay and her research team used a Panoscope to immerse subjects in 360 degrees of high-definition video footage of Thomas’s casino interiors. The findings showed that even people who did not normally gamble succumbed to Thomas’s décor.
