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Thomas Novak

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Thomas Novak

Professor of Marketing; Denit Trust Distinguished Scholar; Co-Director, The Center for the Connected Consumer

Contact:

Email: Thomas Novak
Office Phone: (202) 994-8042
Center for the Connected Consumer
2201 G Street NW, Suite 305 Washington, DC 20052

Thomas P. Novak is the Denit Trust Distinguished Scholar, a professor of marketing, and the co-director of the Center for the Connected Consumer at the George Washington University School of Business (GWSB) in Washington, D.C. Professor Novak received his A.B. in Psychology from Oberlin College in 1977 and his M.A. (1980) and Ph.D. (1984, in quantitative psychology with a formal minor in Biostatistics) from the L.L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He was recognized as a University of North Carolina Distinguished Graduate Alumni in 2002.

Professor Novak’s research since 1993 has focused on consumer behavior in online environments and digital marketing. His current research interests deal with consumer experience of smart devices and the Internet of Things, using machine learning methods for natural language processing and visualization. He co-founded and co-directed a series of research centers (Project 2000, eLab, the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing, and the Center for the Connected Consumer) with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Science Foundation, Paul Allen’s Interval Research Corporation and 40 other corporate sponsors including Walmart.com, Netscape, Sprint, Hewlett-Packard, FedEx, Procter & Gamble, and Hershey’s.

An internationally recognized scholar in Web-based commerce, Dr. Novak has published extensively on the subject in top academic journals in a range of scholarly disciplines. His work has had global impact with over 29,000 citations in Google Scholar. He is an area editor for the Journal of Consumer Research, and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Advertising, and the Journal of Interactive Marketing. He has received numerous prestigious research awards, including the Sheth Foundation/Journal of Marketing Award for long term contributions to the discipline of marketing, the Lazaridis Prize, the Stellner Distinguished Scholar Award, the Robert D. Buzzell MSI Best Paper Award Honorable Mention.

Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington University in 2013, Dr. Novak served on the faculties of the University of California Riverside, Vanderbilt University, and Southern Methodist University. He has been a visiting scholar at Paul Allen’s Interval Research Corp., the University of Hong Kong, University of California San Diego, USC Annenberg School, and Stanford University. Prior to joining academia, he spent five years at Young & Rubicam, New York.

Academic Honors and Awards

2012 University of Pennsylvania Future of Advertising Center/Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative “Innovative Approaches to Measuring Advertising Effectiveness” Winner for proposal “Crowdsourcing Ad Effectiveness: Can Emergent Segments Produce the Most Effective Online Ads? ($7,500)

2012 Marketing Science Institute Ideas Challenge Winner for proposal “Idea Wars: Developing a Collaborative Research Agenda for the Gamification of Marketing” ($10,000)

2012 Finalist, Paul D. Converse Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Science of Marketing.

2011 National Science Foundation Grant # IIS-1114828, “Motivations, Expectations and Goal Pursuit in Social Media,” Co-PI ($413,756 for two years)

2011 Marketing Science Institute “Challenges of Communications and Branding in a Digital Era” research proposal competition winner ($8,750)

Grants ($3.5 million total funding 1993-2013)

Foundation, Institute and Government Grants (since 2008)

2012. University of Pennsylvania Future of Advertising Center/Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative “Innovative Approaches to Measuring Advertising Effectiveness” Winner for proposal “Crowdsourcing Ad Effectiveness: Can Emergent Segments Produce the Most Effective Online Ads? ($7,500)

2002. Marketing Science Institute Ideas Challenge Winner for proposal “Idea Wars: Developing a Collaborative Research Agenda for the Gamification of Marketing” ($10,000)

2011. National Science Foundation Grant # IIS-1114828, “Motivations, Expectations and Goal Pursuit in Social Media,” Co-PI ($413,756 for two years, 2011-2013).

2011. Marketing Science Institute “Challenges of Communications and Branding in a Digital Era” research proposal competition winner ($8,750)

Corporate Funding ($932,000 Project 2000/eLab; $450,000 Sloan Center for Internet Retailing)

CDnow, Daimler-Chrysler, FedEx, the Freedom Forum, Digeo, Financial Services Technology Consortium, First Horizon, Focalink, Gaylord Entertainment, HotWired Ventures LLC, Hewlett-Packard, Ingram Entertainment, Interval Research Corporation, iVillage, J.C. Bradford, Land’s End/Sears, NCR Knowledge labs, Neomodal, Netscape, Nielsen Media Research, O’Reilly & Associates, Pitney Bowes, Roche-Diagnostics, Rouse Company, SBC, Shop at Home, Sprint, Sterling Commerce, Sun Microsystems, Vulcan Ventures, VF Corporation, Walmart.com, Yankelovich Partners.

Foundation and Government Grant ($565,000)

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, American Association for Advancement of Science, The Aspen Institute, The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, Marketing Science Institute, John and Mary R. Markle Foundation, National Science Foundation.

University Grants ($1,075,000)

Vanderbilt University Central Administration, Vanderbilt University Research Council, Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Corporate Gifts (UCR Sloan Center for Internet Retailing)

Global Market Insite (In-kind 12/2007 ), GSI Commerce ($5,500 12/2007), Procter & Gamble ($5,000 9/2008), Miller Coors ($10,000 9/2008)

  • Consumer experience in the Internet of Things (IoT)
  • Assemblage Theory
  • Topological Data Analysis (TDA) and machine learning for visualization of IoT data
  • Person-object interaction and relationships
  • Self-extension and self-expansion theories
  • Marketing strategy for the IoT
  • Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1984)
  • M.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1980)
  • A.B., Oberlin College (1977)
  • Novak, Thomas P.  (2020), “A Generalized Framework for Moral Dilemmas Involving Autonomous Vehicles: A Commentary on Gill,” Forthcoming in Journal of Consumer Research, August.
  • Novak, Thomas P. and Donna L. Hoffman (2019), “Relationship Journeys in the Internet of Things: a New Framework for Understanding Interactions between Consumers and Smart Objects,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 47, pp. 216–237.
  • Hoffman, Donna L., Thomas P. Novak (2018), “Consumer and Object Experience in the Internet of Things: An Assemblage Theory Approach,” Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 44, pp. 1178-1204.
  • Hoffman, Donna L., Thomas P. Novak (2018), “The Path of Emergent Experience in the Consumer IoT: From Early Adoption to Radical Changes in Consumers’ Lives,” Marketing Intelligence Review, Vol. 10 (No. 2), pp.
  • Hoffman, Donna L., Thomas P. Novak and Hyunjin Kang (2017), “Let’s Get Closer: Feelings of Connectedness from Using Social Media, with Implications for Brand Outcomes,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, Vol. 2 (No. 2), pp. 216-228.

Journal Publications

  1. Novak, T.P. (2020), “A Generalized Framework for Moral Dilemmas Involving Autonomous Vehicles: A Commentary on Gill,” Journal of Consumer Research, August (forthcoming).

  2. Novak, T.P. and D.L. Hoffman (2019), “Relationship Journeys in the Internet of Things: A New Framework for Understanding Interactions Between Consumers and Smart Objects,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, special issue on Consumer Journeys: Developing Consumer-Based Strategy, 47 (2) March, 216-237. Available online: https://rdcu.be/8Pu3

  3. Hoffman, D. L., and T.P. Novak (2018), “The Path of Emergent Experience in the Consumer IoT: From Early Adoption to Radical Changes in Consumers’ Lives,” Marketing Intelligence Review, 10(2), 10-17. Lead Article. doi: https://doi.org/10.2478/gfkmir-2018-0012
     
  4. Hoffman, D.L. and T.P. Novak (2018), “Consumer and Object Experience in the Internet of Things: An Assemblage Theory Approach,” Journal of Consumer Research, 44(6), April, 1178-1204. Lead Article.
     
  5. Verhoef, P., Stephen, A., Kannan, P.K., Luo, X., Abhishek, V., Andrews, M., Bart, Y., Datta, H., Fong, N., Hoffman, D., Hu, M., Novak, T., Rand, W., and Zhang, Y. (2017) “Consumer Connectivity in a Complex, Technology-Enabled, and Mobile-Oriented World with Smart Products,” Journal of Interactive Marketing, 40November), 1-8. Lead Article. SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2912321
     
  6. Hoffman, D.L., T.P. Novak and H. Kang, (2017) “Let’s Get Closer: How Regulatory Fit Drives Feelings of Connectedness in Social Media,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, issue on “The Consumer in a Connected World,” 2(2). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2728281
     
  7. White, T., T. P, Novak and D. L. Hoffman (2014), “No Strings Attached: When Giving It Away Versus Making Them Pay Leads to Negative Net Benefit Perceptions in Consumer-Retailer Exchanges,” Journal of Interactive Marketing, 28 (August), 184-195. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1990608
     
  8. Labrecque, L., Mathwick, C., vor dem Esche, J., Novak, T.P., and Hofacker, C. (2013), “Consumer Power: Evolution in the Digital Age,” Journal of Interactive Marketing, 27 (November), 257-269.  https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e266/3d3ab665b0889fb7939cec8be42b51c3ace3.pdf
     
  9. Hoffman, D.L. and T.P. Novak (2012), “Toward a Deeper Understanding of Social Media,” Journal of Interactive Marketing. (Editorial, Co-Editor, Special Issue on “Social Media”), 26(May), 69-70.
     
  10. Giebelhausen, M. and T.P. Novak (2012), “Web Advertising:  Sexual Content on eBay,” Journal of Business Research, 65(June) 840-842.
     
  11. Hoffman, D.L. and Novak. T.P (2011), “Marketing Communication in a Digital Era,” Marketing Management, Fall, 20(3), 37-42, American Marketing Association. Cover article. (Invited article to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Marketing Science Institute.)
     
  12. Hoffman, D., Kopalle, P., Novak, T. (2010) The “Right” Consumers for Better Concepts: Identifying Consumers High in Emergent Nature to Develop New Product Concepts,” Journal of Marketing Research, 47 (October). SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1602043
     
  13. Honorable Mention: 2011 Robert D. Buzzell MSI Best Paper Award for significant contribution to marketing practice and thought.
     
  14. Novak, Thomas P. (2010), "eLab City: A Platform for Academic Research on Virtual Worlds," Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.
     
  15. Neslin, S.A., T.P. Novak, K.R. Baker, and D.L. Hoffman (2009), “An Optimal Contact Model for Maximizing Online Panel Response Rates,” Management Science, 55 (May), 727-737.  https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40539184.pdf
     
  16. Hoffman, D.L. and T.P. Novak (2009) “Flow Online: Lessons Learned and Future Prospects,” Journal of Interactive Marketing, 23(1), 23-34. Most cited article during the period 2007-2011.
     
  17. Novak, T.P. and D.L. Hoffman (2009), “The Fit of Thinking Style and Situation: New Measures of Situation-Specific Experiential and Rational Cognition,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (June), 56-72. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.1086/596026.pdf

Papers Under Review and Working Papers

  1. Novak, T.P. and D.L. Hoffman (2018), A Computational Social Science Framework for Representing Emergent Consumer Experience.” Under Review, Journal of Marketing Research.  Working paper at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3278045
     
  2. Hoffman, D.L. and T.P. Novak (2016), “How to Market the Smart Home: Focus on Emergent Experience, Not Use Cases,” January 15. Working paper available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2840976.
     
  3. Novak, T.P. and D.L. Hoffman (2016), Visualizing Emergent Identity of Assemblages in the Consumer Internet of Things: A Topological Data Analysis Approach,” Working paper available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2840962
     
  4. Hoffman, D.L. and T.P. Novak, (2015), “Emergent Experience and the Connected Consumer in the Smart Home Assemblage and the Internet of Things,” August 20.  Monograph. 152 pages. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2648786
     
  5. Hoffman, D.L. and T.P. Novak (2014), “Online Experience in Social Media: Two Paths to Feeling Close and Connected,” working paper available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1990005
     
  6. Hoffman, D.L. and T.P. Novak (2012), “Why Do People Use Social Media? Empirical Findings and a New Theoretical Framework for Social Media Goal Pursuit,” working paper available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1989586

Recent Research Conference Presentations

  1. Novak, T.P. and D.L. Hoffman (2018), “A Computational Social Science Framework for Visualizing the Possibility Space of Consumer-Object Assemblages from IoT Interaction Data,” paper presented at the 2018 Association for Consumer Research Conference, Dallas, TX, October 13.
     
  2. Novak, T.P. and D.L. Hoffman (2018), “A Computational Social Science Framework for Representing Emergent Consumer Experience,” paper presented at SCECR 2018, Rotterdam, June 18-19.
     
  3. Novak, T.P. and D.L. Hoffman (2018), “A Computational Social Science Framework for Representing Emergent Consumer Experience,” paper presented at Theory + Practice in Marketing, UCLA, May 16-18.
     
  4. Hoffman, D.L. and T.P. Novak (2018),” Mining the Secret Life of Objects: An Object-Oriented Approach to Constructing Representations of Object Experience,” accepted for presentation at the 2018 Society for Consumer Psychology Conference, Dallas, TX, February 15-17.
     
  5. Hoffman, D.L. and T.P. Novak (2018), “The Changing Relationship Between Consumers and Objects in the IoT,” presentation in the invited special session “Doing Observational Research,” presentation at the 2018 Winter American Marketing Association Conference, New Orleans, LA, February 23-25.
     
  6. Hoffman, D.L. and T. P. Novak (2017), “Understanding Object Experience,” paper presented at the 2017 Association for Consumer Research Conference, San Diego, CA, October 26-29.
     
  7. Hoffman, D.L. and T. P. Novak (2017), “Send ‘Her’ My Love: A Circumplex Model for Understanding Relationship Journeys in Consumer-Smart Object Assemblages,” paper presented at the 2017 Association for Consumer Research Conference Special Session: Human-Object Relationships: How Consumers Interact with Analog and Digital Things in Analog and Digital Worlds, October 26-29.
     
  8. Hoffman, D.L. and T.P. Novak (2017), “Consumer-Object Relationship Styles in the Internet of Things, paper presented at the Consumer Culture Theory Conference, Anaheim, CA, July 10-12.
     
  9. Novak, T.P. and D.L. Hoffman (2017), “Visualizing Emergent Identity of Assemblages in the Internet of Things: A Topological Data Analysis Approach,” paper presented at INFORMS Marketing Science Conference, Los Angeles, CA, June 10.
     
  10. Novak, T.P. and D.L. Hoffman (2017), “Visualizing Emergent Identity of Assemblages in the Internet of Things: A Topological Data Analysis Approach,” paper presented at EMAC 2017, Groningen, Netherlands, May 25.
     
  11. Hoffman, D.L. and T.P. Novak (2017), “Consumer-Object Relationship Journeys in the Internet of Things,” paper presented at Though Leaders in Consumer-Based Strategy Conference, Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 19-21.
     
  12. Hoffman, D.L. and T.P. Novak (2017), “How to Market the Consumer IoT: Focus on Experience,” MSI Webinar, March 1.
     
  13. Novak, T.P. (2017), “An Assemblage Theory Framework for Consumer Experience: Implications for Marketplace Collaboration,” paper presented at Invited Special Session, Winter AMA, Orlando, FL, February 18.
     
  14. Novak, T.P. (2017), “Expansion and Extension Experiences,” paper presented at Invited Special Session, Winter AMA, Orlando, FL, February 17.
     
  15. Hoffman, D.L. and T.P. Novak (2016), “A Machine Learning and Data-Driven Visualization Framework for Studying Emergent Experience in the Consumer IoT,” Paper presented at the Mobile + Social: Marketing Big Data Analytics Workshop 10th Triennial Invitational Choice symposium, Lake Louise, Canada, (University of Alberta) May 14-17.
     
  16. Hoffman, D.L. and T.P. Novak (2016), “When Dumb Objects Become Smart, Do Smart Consumers Become Dumb?,” presented at the Invited Perspectives Session, ACR Annual Conference, Berlin, Germany, October 27-30.
     
  17. Hoffman, D.L., T.P. Novak, and H. Kang (2016), “Anthropomorphism from Self-Extension and Self-Expansion: An Assemblage Theory Approach to Interactions Between Consumers and Smart Devices,” presented at the ACR Annual Conference, Berlin, Germany, October 27-30.
     
  18. Novak, T.P. and D.L. Hoffman (2016), “Visualizing Emergent Identity of Assemblages in the Internet of Things: A Topological Data Analysis Approach,” presented at the ACR Annual Conference, Berlin, Germany, October 27-30.
     
  19. Hoffman, D.L. and T.P. Novak (2016), “How to Market the Consumer IoT: Focus on Experience,” presented at the MSI Conference on Marketing in the Consumer Internet of Things, September 30, Washington, DC. (also conference co-chair)
     
  20. Hoffman, D.L., Novak, T.P. and Kang, H. (2016), “Anthropomorphism from Self-Extension and Self-Expansion Processes: An Assemblage Theory Approach to Interactions between Consumers and Smart Devices,” paper presented at the Society for Consumer Psychology Winter Conference, St. Pete Beach, FL, Feb 25-27.

MKTG 6252 - Digital Marketing

An elective for the MBA and Graduate Certificate in Marketing

The course is designed to stretch and challenge your thinking about Digital Marketing, a broad, complex, dominating and fast-moving field. Social media sites driven by user-generated content dominate the online landscape. Leading online retailers like Amazon and eBay are successful in part because they incorporate strong social components such as user reviews and other user-generated content. Online advertising, and online shopping and search marketing are big business on the Web. In addition to these covering these topics, digital marketing is entering a new post-social phase. A third of the US population regularly uses voice assistants, and consumers are increasingly having human-style conversations with non-humans. So, this course also covers these post-social technologies, including location marketing, augmented reality, virtual reality, the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), that promise to radically change the face of marketing, and the world, in the coming decade. Class sessions will be used for lectures, small group in-class exercises, and student presentations

MKTG 4154 - Digital Marketing

An elective for the undergraduate Marketing major

This undergraduate marketing elective is designed to stretch and challenge your thinking about Digital Marketing. We cover four interrelated aspects of Digital Marketing: a) digital strategy foundations; b) search, email and display fundamentals; c), the social media marketing; and d) smart devices and online shopping. You will learn and apply multiple frameworks and methods for understanding digital marketing including Big Bang Disruption, Groundswell, STEPPS, the Kahn Retailing Success Matrix, and Jaron Lanier’s critical perspective on social media. We also cover where digital marketing is headed next, including developments in virtual/augmented reality, and AI powered smart objects in the Internet of Things.

MKTG 3143 Marketing Research

A required course for the undergraduate Marketing major

The course is organized in three main parts. First, we cover marketing research design topics, including formulating research problems, the distinction between exploratory, descriptive and experimental methods, how measurement and scaling applies to questionnaire design, and the basics of different sampling approaches.  Second, you will gain extensive hands-on experience performing state-of-the-art marketing research data analysis using modern open-source “No-Code” R-based statistical software (JASP and Jamovi). Third, you’ll apply these 3rd generation data analysis tools in a “mini-project.