We take inspiration from consumers, strive for relevance by focusing on issues that are relevant to our stakeholders and involve our stakeholders in the knowledge generation process.

• Psychological Ownership

• Physical Realities and Sensory Marketing

• Consumers in a Digital Society

• Consumers and New Market Practices

• Prosocial and Responsible Consumer Behaviors

quantitative and qualitative research, lab and field experiments, survey and longitudinal studies, measurement and scale development, structural equation modeling, psycho-physiological and neuroscientific measurement

m.core is among the leading groups of researchers on psychological ownership. We have organized the first international, multidisciplinary conferences on the topic, established the only scientific blog on the topic and recently even founded a collection on “Possession, Ownership and Property”, in short the POP collection, in the WU library (this is where you can find an inspirational selection of topic books across disciplines).

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGICAL OWNERSHIP?

Psychological ownership is a simple yet powerful concept (for an early key text on psychological ownership see Pierce et al. 2003). It refers to the degree to which people experience possessive feelings for something and is best captured in the word “mine”. The more people feel that something is “my” rather than just “a or the”, the more psychological ownership they tend to experience. As the term already suggests psychological ownership is a psychological construct. It is not the same as legal ownership. For example, our students can, and hopefully do, feel that WU is “my” university though they obviously do not legally own this organization which rather belongs to the state. Psychological ownership can also be experienced for more things than can be legally owned. People can psychologically own parks, countries, work places, brands, idea and anything else than people can address as “my”.

WHY STUDY PSYCHOLOGICAL OWNERSHIP?

Psychological ownership matters enormously. Whether or not people feel that something is theirs, somebody else’s or nobody’s plays a fundamental role for human behavior, social interactions but also economic transactions. Feelings of ownership are present, when a child says “this is mine”, when people decide that it has to be this and no other product, when people are loyal to products and brands, when spouses quarrel over the remote control, when a workplace becomes home and sometimes also when a CEO signs an important contract.

Here at m.core we study psychological ownership in all its facets.

For example, we study:

• How psychological ownership for brands differs from other brand reactions and how powerful it is.

• What role psychological ownership might play in crowdfunding.

• How knowledge about psychological ownership may help to improve environmental protection.

• How product design and packaging affect psychological ownership.

• Whether emotions play a role in the generation of psychological ownership.

• How psychological ownership can be leveraged to improve privacy protection.

If you are interested to learn more visit our blog, Prof. Kamleitner’s collection of her ownership research on researchgate or simply get in touch.

Every month we get in touch with consumers opinions and conduct our own survey on contemporary consumer behaviors (e.g. how often do people bath, what do they prefer for washing their laundry, how do they feel about foodsharing). We invite everyone to participate and share some key insights in our "Im Fokus" section.

more information

m.core and its members are actively engaged with the scientific community. Our engagement comprises 5 main pillars:

1. We collaborate. We actively collaborate with research partners from all over the world and continuously grow our research network.

2. We review. We frequently contribute to the scientific community by serving as reviewers and on editorial boards of international journals and funding schemes.

3. We organize. We provide a platform for key research topics by organizing events, symposiums and special publications.

4. We are present. We represent WU at various international and national workshops and conferences.

5. We engage. We are members of numerous international research organizations.