Professor in Progress

Photo by Beth Wynn

By Kirsten Shaw

The concept of “do what you love, love what you do” must have come about because of people like Christian Barney. The PhD student is now in the fifth and final year of her marketing studies at Mississippi State, and there’s no doubt she is on the right path.

It was a path discovered near the end of her undergraduate years at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

“I was trying to figure out what to do,” she recalls. “A professor asked what interested me. I told her I love research – it’s so interesting to try to answer questions scientifically and then to share what you learn with others. She said, ‘So, you want to be a professor.’”

It did not take long for Barney to realize the career would suit her well. She completed a marketing degree followed by an MBA at the University of Montana, before turning her sights southward.

Mississippi State landed on Barney’s radar when her sister participated in the National Student Exchange program, which offers undergraduates “study away” opportunities at U.S. and Canadian institutions.

“My little sister did a year in business here, so I was able to come visit her and saw that it was a really nice place,” says the Onalaska, WI, native. “The people are absolutely amazing. The heat in the summer kills me every year, but the people make it worth it…and there’s air conditioning everywhere!”

The study of marketing holds endless questions and possible directions that Barney is eager to pursue.

Asked what she likes about the field, she replies, “The applied psychology – it’s fun to see it in everyday life. I love going to Walmart at the beginning of the year, when freshmen are shopping for themselves for the first time. It’s interesting to watch the decision-making process and think about how those decisions might be influenced.“

For her doctoral dissertation, Barney is investigating how “storytelling” can affect online purchasing behavior. She has learned that when online product descriptions are narrative, shoppers view the items as more customized to themselves and therefore may be willing to pay more.

For example, a partial description of The J. Peterman Company’s Harrington jacket reads, “James Dean wore it in Rebel Without a Cause. Elvis wore it. McQueen, too…. Has the same chops as a WWII flight jacket. Looked cool at Heathrow in 1972. Still does. Keeps you dry if you catch a downpour on the back nine. Looks great with or without a Lambretta.”

The description of a Harrington jacket on another well-known retailer’s site reads, “We updated this take on the classic bomber jacket by removing the standard ribbed waist and replacing it with a sleek straight hem, for a more relaxed feel and a thoroughly contemporary look. It’s lightweight and casual and makes for the perfect transitional layer.”

Most shoppers, Barney has found, would ascribe higher value to the Peterman jacket because it gives them an image to which they can connect their own experiences, making the product feel individually suited to them.

“Everyone is reading the same thing, but everyone creates their own stories with that description,” observes Barney. “Think about a movie you’ve seen that was different from what you imagined after reading the book.”

Barney performs many of her experiments in MSU’s Market Innovation Lab and Observatory (MILO), where technology like eye tracking and galvanic skin response enables her to study what captures the attention of participants as they view products online. She has also gone into the field by working with a local store, recording what draws the interest of volunteer shoppers.

Her research hasn’t been limited to online buying behavior. A topic she’s had fun exploring with faculty and peers is the marketing of embarrassing products. She has looked at how a product’s packaging can affect buying decisions, for instance, and her latest project has shown how humor in advertising can help negate the embarrassment of buying a particular item.

Somewhat unusually, Barney dove into research from the very beginning of her PhD program. Her self-motivation and drive to produce the best possible output have carried throughout her MSU student career, impressing her dissertation advisors among others.

“With Christian, it’s ‘wind her up, and let her go,’” says Dr. Joel Collier, advisor and Director of the Marketing PhD Program. “Some students require a lot of guidance and editing in the beginning, but she hasn’t needed much of that. The quality of the product she would bring to us from the start is testimony to her own skill building. We quickly moved to a role that was more like that of co-authors than mentors.”

Barney enjoys working alongside colleagues in the Department of Marketing, Quantitative Analysis and Business Law (MQABL). She has recently been taking part in a study on bereavement with her other advisor, Associate Professor of Marketing Dr. Mike Breazeale, as well as Dr. Carol Esmark Jones of the University of Alabama and Dr. Jennifer Stevens of the University of Toledo. The team has been studying how people deal with a deceased loved one’s possessions and ways to help them through the process.

“We found one way to make it easier to give things away is for the person to take and keep pictures of the items,” notes Barney. “It also helps if they give items to people who share the same values as the deceased. For instance, if the loved one was a fisher, it’s comforting to give the poles to someone who likes to fish.”

“Christian is a natural when it comes to research,” observes Breazeale. “She is innately curious and has a knack for finding new angles to examine and for bringing various streams of research together in a cohesive way. She’s equally adept at leading a project and being a supportive co-author. I look forward to the research that she will produce as she grows and adds to her skill set.”

Barney earned MSU’s COB Graduate Student Research Award in 2018 and 2020. Here, at the 2018 awards banquet are (from left) University President Mark Keenum, COB Research Support Award recipient Schanna Beckham, Barney, COB Faculty Research Award recipient Dr. Frank Adams, Dean Sharon Oswald and MSU Provost David Shaw.

Photo by Beth Wynn

It is no surprise that Barney has earned the University’s COB Outstanding Doctoral Researcher Award twice – the first to do so in 15 years or more. Last spring, she was named to the MSU Graduate Student Hall of Fame. She has been published in the Journal of Retailing, Harvard Business Review and the Journal of Business Research, and she has several more articles under review.

“She’s been published in some journals that even established professors have a hard time getting into,” comments Collier. “That speaks volumes for the quality of her work.”

Barney and dissertation advisor Dr. Joel Collier discuss her use of equipment in the Market Innovation Lab and Observatory.

Photo by Beth Wynn

For Barney, a significant value of research is in sharing what she learns – especially with students. Her enthusiasm for marketing is infectious, and she brings creativity to her teaching.

“Christian’s students love her,” says Breazeale. “She brings a lot of real-world examples into her lessons, and that allows her to teach material in a way that sticks with them. She also likes to bring her research into the classroom so that her students’ perspectives can inform her while she shows them the importance of managerially applicable research.”

“I do a lot of hands-on projects where students figure out how they would operate in a given situation or resolve a certain issue,” Barney says. “I might give them a simulation in which they’re managers who have to work through a situation related to the material covered. Or they might be asked to create an ad based on what they’ve read. Students have a brilliant capacity for figuring things out.”

This semester, she has been teaching senior-level Consumer Behavior. While her education has basically been continuous, she does bring marketplace experience to the classroom. Summer employment for a digital creative agency in Seattle included clients like Coca-Cola and Microsoft. She has also worked in Internet retailing at Mason Companies in Wisconsin and served as an annual giving officer at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

“I cannot say enough good things about Mississippi State University, particularly the professors in MQABL,” she states. “They’re so good here at finding the best and smartest people, and that includes faculty, staff, PhD students and other students. They make me so happy I came. I can’t imagine being as successful in any other program as I’ve been here.”

“One reason she’s been successful is because she’s well suited to the type of program we have, which is more hands-on than some others,” observes Collier. “It’s almost apprentice-like – mentoring PhD students into professors.”

As Barney completes her PhD next spring and prepares to take that step from student to professor, she will surely have her choice of offers. The university that successfully recruits her will get a faculty member who is the complete package – passionate about her field, passionate about learning and passionate about teaching.

“I really love my job,” she shares, “And I’m very glad I get to do this.”