Michael Solomon
Consumer categories are dissolving faster than brand playbooks can keep up. The familiar segmentation logic, demographic targeting, and brand positioning frameworks that powered the last two decades of marketing are producing diminishing returns against shoppers who refuse to behave consistently across channels, life stages, or identities. Marketing leaders need a sharper read on why people actually buy, and what AI, avatars, and fashion signal about commercial intent.
Michael Solomon is a consumer psychologist and Saint Joseph’s University marketing professor who helps companies decode why customers buy, decide, and switch.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Michael Solomon
- His textbook Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and Being is the most widely adopted course text on the subject worldwide, which means the conceptual vocabulary used by a generation of marketers traces back to his work.
- He has advised Calvin Klein, Levi Strauss, Under Armour, BMW, Procter & Gamble, eBay, and United Airlines on consumer psychology applied to brand, retail, and product decisions.
- He brings academic discipline to fast-moving commercial questions: AI consumer trust, avatar identity, metaverse engagement, and post-pandemic spending behaviour, all grounded in published research.
- Holder of the Dirk Warren ’50 Sesquicentennial Chair at Saint Joseph’s University and recognised among the ten most productive scholars in advertising and marketing communications.
- Regular Forbes.com contributor, with commentary picked up by The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Adweek, and Time, giving clients a speaker whose framing is already in market.
Biography highlights
- Dirk Warren ’50 Sesquicentennial Chair and Professor of Marketing, Haub School of Business, Saint Joseph’s University.
- Author of more than thirty books, including the global bestselling textbook Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and Being and The New Chameleons.
- Former faculty at NYU, Rutgers, Auburn University, and the University of Manchester.
- Forbes.com contributor; commentary in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Adweek, Time, and on Today, Good Morning America, and CNN.
- Cutty Sark Men’s Fashion Award recipient for research on the psychology of clothing.
- Client roster spanning Calvin Klein, Levi Strauss, Under Armour, BMW, P&G, eBay, Subaru, United Airlines, Microsoft Advertising, and the U.S. Army.
Biography
The textbook that trained a generation of marketers in consumer behaviour, Buying, Having, and Being, sits on Michael Solomon’s CV. So does a Forbes column read by the executives who now run those marketers’ employers. That dual position, academic standard-setter and commercial commentator, is what brings serious brands to him for strategic reads on customer psychology.
Solomon holds the Dirk Warren ’50 Sesquicentennial Chair at Saint Joseph’s University’s Haub School of Business, with prior faculty posts at NYU, Rutgers, Auburn, and the University of Manchester. His PhD in social psychology from UNC Chapel Hill anchors a research career that has placed him among the ten most productive scholars in advertising and marketing communications, and the fifteen most cited in behavioural sciences and fashion.
The applied work is where the academic record converts into commercial value. Solomon has advised Calvin Klein, Levi Strauss, Under Armour, BMW, Procter & Gamble, eBay, Subaru, and United Airlines on questions of brand identity, customer experience, and category disruption. His current speaking work centres on consumer trust in AI and avatars, the post-pandemic spending psychology he frames as G.A.S., and the dissolution of traditional consumer categories he treats in The New Chameleons.
For senior marketing, brand, and customer-experience leaders, the value is access to a thinker who can defend a claim about consumer behaviour from the underlying psychology, then translate it into a brand or product decision a board can act on.
Key speaking topics
- Consumer psychology and decision-making
- Brand identity and customer experience
- Marketing implications of AI, avatars, and the metaverse
- Fashion psychology and the symbolic meaning of products
- Post-pandemic consumer behaviour
- Retail disruption and category evolution
- Cross-cultural consumer meaning-making
Ideal for
- CMOs and brand directors rebuilding strategy after segmentation models stop working
- Retail and consumer goods leadership teams confronting category disruption
- Customer experience and insight leads in financial services, automotive, apparel, and FMCG
- Boards of consumer-facing businesses assessing exposure to AI-mediated commerce
Audience outcomes
- A sharper read on the psychology driving current consumer switching, loyalty, and category exit.
- Specific frameworks for thinking about AI and avatars in brand and retail experience, not generic technology commentary.
- Named research and case examples that senior marketers can cite internally to defend a strategic shift.
- A more rigorous internal vocabulary for consumer behaviour, drawn from the academic standard text in the field.
Talks
How consumers form trust with artificial intelligence, avatars, and chatbots, and what that means for brand and service design.
Key takeaways:
- The psychological mechanisms behind consumer trust in machine interlocutors.
- Where avatars and AI agents add brand value and where they erode it.
- Implications for customer experience, service, and product design.
A reframing of marketing strategy fundamentals for a consumer landscape where traditional category logic is breaking down.
Key takeaways:
- Why long-established segmentation models are losing predictive power.
- Where the next sources of customer value are emerging.
- How to reposition brand and product strategy against shifting consumer identity.
Fashion psychology as a lens on consumer behaviour, applied beyond apparel to brand and product choice more broadly.
Key takeaways:
- The symbolic and identity functions products perform for consumers.
- How fashion psychology informs branding decisions outside the apparel industry.
- Practical implications for retail, packaging, and brand expression.
Virtual worlds, avatars, and the commercial logic of identity exploration in digital environments.
Key takeaways:
- Why avatars matter for brand engagement and customer loyalty.
- How virtual environments reshape retail and product discovery.
- The consumer psychology behind digital identity and its commercial implications.