Eesha Sharma

Eesha Sharma is assistant professor of marketing at the Fowler College of Business at San Diego State University. Professor Sharma received her Ph.D. in marketing and a dual B.Sc. degree in finance and marketing from NYU’s Stern School of Business. She studies consumer behavior and financial well-being and is interested in how psychology and marketing can be used to understand and improve both. She is particularly interested in how people react to perceived financial scarcity in their lives and in the lives of others. Using a combination of behavioral experiments and field studies, she examines topics such as: how people form perceptions of their wealth, how people behave when they feel poor, why people give to charity, and what factors may improve and/or worsen consumer financial decision making. Professor Sharma’s research has been published in journals such as Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and it has received attention at media outlets such as Forbes, The Huffington Post, Marketplace, Men’s Health, The New Yorker, Psychology Today, Science Daily, and Vanity Fair. Prior to joining SDSU, she was a marketing professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, and prior to academia, she worked as an investment banking analyst in the financial institutions group (FIG) at Goldman Sachs.

Education

• PhD, New York University, 2013.
• Major: Marketing
• M.Phil., New York University, 2012.
• Major: Marketing
• BS, New York University, 2007.
• Major: Finance, Marketing

Research

Journal Article

• De La Rosa, W., Sharma, E., Tully, S. M., Giannella, E., & Rino, G. (2021). Psychological ownership interventions increase interest in claiming government benefits. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(35).
• Sharma, E., Tully, S., & Cryder, C. (2021). Psychological Ownership of (Borrowed) Money. Journal of Marketing Research, 58(3), 497–514.
• Hill, R. P., & Sharma, E. (2020). Consumer Vulnerability. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 30(3), 551–570.
• Paley, A., Tully, S. M., & Sharma, E. (2019). Too Constrained to Converse: The Effect of Financial Constraints on Word-of-Mouth. Journal of Consumer Research. Published.
• Tully, S. M., & Sharma, E. (2018). Context-Dependent Drivers of Discretionary Debt Decisions: Explaining Willingness to Borrow for Experiential Purchases. Journal of Consumer Research, 44(5), 960–973
• Sharma, E., & Morwitz, V. G. (2016). Saving the masses: The impact of perceived efficacy on charitable giving to single vs. multiple beneficiaries. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 135, 45–54.
• Sussman, A. B., Sharma, E., & Alter, A. L. (2015). Framing charitable donations as exceptional expenses increases giving. Journal of Experimental Psychology - Applied, 21(2), 130–139.
• Sharma, E., Mazar, N., Alter, A. L., & Ariely, D. (2014). Financial deprivation selectively shifts moral standards and compromises moral decisions. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 123(2), 90–100.
• Kappes, H. B., Sharma, E., & Oettingen, G. (2013). Positive fantasies dampen charitable giving when many resources are demanded. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 23(1), 128–135.
• Sharma, E., & Alter, A. L. (2012). Financial Deprivation Prompts Consumers to Seek Scarce Goods. Journal of Consumer Research, 39(3), 545–560.