Research Feature with Sunghwan Yi
Sunghwan Yi is a professor in the Department of Marketing and Consumer Studies. He earned his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University and holds an MBA and a BBA from Seoul National University. His research is primarily centred on consumer behaviour.
What is the overarching focus of your research program?
Overall, I am interested in why people keep over-consuming certain products (or become addicted to them) and under-consuming others (or cannot increase their consumption of them) in spite of knowing that doing so is not good for themselves and others around them.
Briefly describe a research problem or issue you are currently investigating. What questions or challenges are you hoping to address?
On the over-consumption side, my research programs include motivational and situational factors behind individuals engaging in excessive buying (i.e, impulse buying and compulsive buying) and gambling as well as their difficulty in exercising self-control. So many people buy things on impulse and never get to use them. They just enjoy the process of browsing and buying!
On the under-consumption side, my research programs include identifying situational factors that make it difficult for individuals to choose or consume healthy and sustainable foods, such as fruits, vegetables and legume-based food, and using these findings to gently “nudge” them toward these items. Furthermore, I am collaborating with institutional food services to help them find better ways of offering more healthy and environmentally sustainable food that are mouthwatering as well.
Who is the target audience? Why is your research important to this audience? Why does it matter?
On the over-consumption side, the target audience is not only consumers themselves who wish to exercise self-control over their excessive behaviour but also public policy makers as well as professionals who provide counselling and assistance to people who seek help on their addictive consumption.
On the under-consumption side, the target audience is mainly institutional food services as well as public health authorities and professionals in the domain of healthy and sustainable eating. Of course, my research on nudging is attracting a lot of interest from consumers who know they need to eat more healthily and sustainably but find it difficult to do so!
What is the wider social benefit of your research?
As I already alluded to earlier, the purpose of my research is to help close the gap between what people know they should buy/eat more often and what they actually end up buying/eating. Likewise, my research helps close the gap between what people know they should do less often (like impulse/compulsive buying, frequent betting on sports) and their actual behaviour. Ultimately, I am trying to help people and the society in general live better life: eat healthily and sustainably and not waste their time and money on things they do not really need and later regret about.
What comes next?
I recently began two projects this year.
Together with a couple of collaborators in other universities, I have started a new project about young adults’ excessive sports betting behaviour and their loss of control. We are interested in how mobile sports betting has become so widespread amongst young people in Ontario and why it is so easy for them to lose control over their betting.
The other project is really brand new. I have just started to look up the literature about the environmental impact of consumers’ excessive buying of ultra-fast fashion in the past few years. Very little is known about why young consumers are so fascinated about ultra-fast fashion products when many of them hold more pro-environmental values than their parents. Why are they taking exceptions for fast fashion?
So many young consumers are losing their control over browsing social media pages in which micro-influencers are featuring recently acquired fast fashion products, which are actually shipped to them by manufacturers for free. These influencers are even getting commission when their followers click and buy the featured products from the manufacturer. Why do the followers knowingly let this happen? Exploring these issues will help us find ways of reducing our over-reliance on ultra-fast fashion.