Stephanie Noble

Feature article written by Kris Lindsey Hall.

AMA’s Retailing and Pricing SIG would like to introduce one of the members of the Board of Directors, Dr. Stephanie Noble, Proffitt’s Professor of Marketing at the University of Tennessee.

Stephanie graduated from UMASS – Amherst with her Ph.D. in Marketing. Stephanie was drawn to marketing after working for a Marketing Research Company in Tempe, AZ, during her master’s program at Arizona State University (ASU), where she also completed her bachelor’s degree.  She says, “Working at this company allowed me to apply my psychology background and SPSS training to business problems. I loved being able to apply psych concepts I learned in school to real-world problems for clients.” The owner of the company, a fellow ASU grad, mentored and trained her. Stephanie shared, “from day one I was meeting with clients, conducting focus groups, supervising telephone interviewers, crafting surveys, analyzing data, and preparing reports for clients.  I loved every aspect of the job. The rest is history as they say.”

A Passion for Retailing

Stephanie’s interest in retailing originated while studying and traveling abroad. She spent a Spring semester studying in England during the 1990s and took the opportunity to backpack throughout Europe during and after that semester. Her travels brought her to numerous countries including Scotland, Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Stephanie was hooked as “in every country, there were different stores, food preferences, brands, specialty products, etc.” She indicated that whenever she entered a new country, or even a region within a country, she found herself drawn to grocery stores of all sizes, walking through them to see product assortments, brands (or the lack thereof), packaging differences, product displays, etc. Stephanie still walks through grocery stores whenever visiting NYC sharing “I’m always fascinated with the product assortments and specialty items in these small stores!” 

Stephanie kicked off her academic career focusing on retailer relationship marketing efforts, which she says were often inspired by visiting small, family owned and independent retailers in Europe. Whenever an employee would spark up a conversation with her, she always felt welcomed, rather than simply feeling like a tourist.  According to Stephanie, “their welcoming efforts often led to product tasting, free trials, great recommendations, and/or lots of interesting information about local products.” 

Stephanie expresses that she has these and many more fond memories from her international interactions and experiences, which she considers to be greatly influenced by her academic interest in retailing related topics throughout her career.

“Don’t give up (!) and network, network, network!”

Mentoring doctoral students are one of Stephanie’s top priorities and often at the heart of discussions with colleagues. One of the main challenges involves identifying top candidates early on. Most schools use GPA and GMAT scores to identify top candidates. However, Stephanie notes that she “always thought a personality profile on persistence or motivation would be better at predicting success.” She emphasizes how academics face countless rejections citing how if only 10% (or less) of papers get accepted to top journals, 90% are getting rejected. While receiving rejections can be disheartening, Stephanie recommends that students “don’t give up,” encouraging them to “learn from each rejection and persist.”

Developing relationships is also essential and Stephanie advocates “network, network, network!” Stephanie notes that she wishes she understood the importance of this earlier in her career, saying “if it takes a village to raise a child – it also takes a village to raise a doctoral student!”  She reminds students that the more expansive the network, the more ideas that can be collected for teaching and research, and the more advice available regarding potential data sources, job information, co-author recommendations, and countless other things. Her advice, even if students are shy, is to make sure conferences are attended with the goal of meeting at least one or two people at every conference. Although she admits this might be harder to do in our COVID environment, she encourages students to rise to the challenge and “persist!”

Inspiration for Future Retailing Research

Together with Martin Mende (2019; “Retail Apocalypse or Golden Opportunity for Retail Frontline Management?”), Stephanie outlines several future research opportunities including: 1) the role of technology in shaping the future of retailing, 2) the impact of consumer deceleration, 3) retail store formats including pop-up stores vs. extravagant physical stores, 4) the rise of discount stores, and 5) the emerging idea of retail ecosystems. 

Additionally, in Grewal, Noble, Roggeveen, and Nordfalt (2020; “The Future of In-store Technology”), Stephanie and her co-authors develop a 2 X 2 typology of in-store technologies, offering future research directions related to these technologies and: 1) convenience and social presence dimensions 2) the sensation of touch (product contamination, ownership feelings), 3) FLEs vs. avatars/embodied robots, and 4) negative effects of in-store technology.

Stephanie hopes researchers will be able to use these ideas to jump-start new research in this domain.

“It is very rewarding seeing past doctoral students carving out careers for themselves as successful teachers and researchers. Seeing their successes makes me the proudest.”

After reflecting on her own experiences as a doctoral student and assistant professor, Stephanie realized there were many things she wished she had understood better at that time. As a result, she says she has taken those experiences and used them to be the best possible mentor to her own doctoral students. She says that their academic successes are the academic accomplishment of which she is proudest.

So how does Stephanie celebrate a job well done?

Stephanie lightheartedly shared that it is quite a challenge to celebrate work when “your life revolves around four kids.” Reflecting on her first acceptance letter for a premier journal, the Journal of Marketing, she remembers clearly that it was a Tuesday. The reason being that when she rushed home from work to share her good news with the family, she was met by her older son, who interrupted her exciting announcement to ask if she’d be making tacos for dinner as it was “Taco Tuesday.” He then shared that he loved her tacos, which she says “warmed my heart more than any acceptance letter could so I celebrated my first A level pub by making tacos for my kids for dinner!” They were able to close out “Taco Tuesday” with a celebratory cake that her husband brought home for the occasion.

More “fun facts” about Stephanie…

• The first concert Stephanie ever attended was Prince.
• Stephanie is married to another marketing academic at UT, Charlie Noble. She shared, “Our kids hate it when we talk work at the dinner table but with 2 academics in the family it tends to occur frequently, much to our kids’ dismay. Our children probably know more about journal lists, online teaching, Mturk, IRB, etc. than we care to admit!”

Some of Stephanie’s non-academic interests or hobbies include:  

1. Traveling (pre-COVID anyway!) – the more exotic the location the better
2. Watching her kids’ sports games (soccer, dance, football, and hockey) 
3. Watching sci-fi movies – she doesn’t get to watch them much but still loves them