Doctoral Student

Silvia Bellezza

Silvia is a fourth year doctoral student in the Marketing Unit at the Harvard Business School.
Her research investigates how consumers use products and brands to express identity and to signal status. For example, one of her projects explores the conditions under which nonconforming behaviors, such as wearing red sneakers in a professional context, lead to inferences of higher status in the eyes of others. In another project, she analyzes intergroup dynamics in the domain of exclusive brands and demonstrates the positive effects of non-core users of the brand, the “brand tourism effect.” Silvia’s other related research interests include the consequences of product ownership and counterfeit goods.
Prior to coming to Harvard, she worked for five years in the marketing departments of Danone and L.V.M.H. Silvia earned her B.A. with honors in Economics from LUISS University in Italy and her MBA from IESE Business School in Spain.

 

Other Publications and Materials

  1. The Red Sneakers Effect: Inferring Status from Signals of Nonconformity

    Citation:

    Bellezza, Silvia, Francesca Gino, and Anat Keinan. "The Red Sneakers Effect: Inferring Status from Signals of Nonconformity." White Paper, 2013.
  2. Brand-Tourists or Brand-Immigrants? How New Consumers Dilute or Enhance the Image of Symbolic Brands

    Keywords: Brands and Branding; Consumer Behavior;

    Citation:

    Bellezza, Silvia, and Anat Keinan. "Brand-Tourists or Brand-Immigrants? How New Consumers Dilute or Enhance the Image of Symbolic Brands." 2012.