Jacob Suher joined The School of Business at Portland State University in the fall of 2016. Prior to entering academia, Jacob worked as a consultant and analyst for TNS Retail & Shopper and Kantar Retail. He developed novel retail decision making tools and worked with international clients including Cannondale Bicycles, Clorox, Coinstar, Hewlett-Packard, Nestlé, Pringles, Samsung, and SC Johnson. At PSU, Jacob teaches Marketing Strategy and Marketing Analytics in the undergraduate program.
Jacob’s research focuses on consumer-based strategy in the context of retail and food marketing. His primary research interest is in-store decision making and the drivers of unplanned purchases. For example, Jacob’s research answers questions like: Why are over half of all grocery decisions made in-store? How can mobile applications influence in-store path-to-purchase? What motivates consumers to make unplanned purchases? In addition, he is passionate about promoting healthy food choices and investigates the effect of consumers’ lay beliefs on their judgments and consumption decisions.
Jacob’s research has been published in the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Consumer Psychology, the Journal of Advertising Research, and the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. His paper on the causal effect of path length on unplanned purchasing received the 2013 MSI/H. Paul Root Award for its significant contribution to marketing practice.