Professor Santana studies consumer judgment and decision making within the domain of behavioral pricing and the subjective value of money. With respect to behavioral pricing, her current projects are focused on how consumers think, feel, and behave in response to select pricing strategies that they encounter in the marketplace. For the subjective value of money, Professor Santana's current projects explore how consumers perceive, spend, and save money in different forms.
Shelle Santana is an assistant professor of business administration in the Marketing Unit at Harvard Business School, where she teaches the Marketing course to first-year MBA students. Before pursuing her academic career, she held a variety of senior marketing roles at American Express Company, ultimately as head of U.S. corporate card marketing and global product strategy.
In one stream of research, Professor Santana explores how consumers respond to various pricing strategies in the marketplace. In one of her current projects, she examines how “drip pricing,” where sellers gradually reveal individual price components for a product or service, affects consumers’ current choices and future behavior intentions. In another, she shows how individual and contextual factors influence prices paid by consumers in pay-what-you-want settings. Professor Santana’s work has been published in the Journal of Retailing, and she co-authored “Consumer Financial Protection Legislation” in Regulating Wall Street: The Dodd-Frank Act and the New Architecture of Global Finance.
A second stream of research looks at consumers’ subjective value of money—or how people tend to spend and save differently depending on the type and form of currency that they are using. Currently, she is examining how consumers value credit card loyalty points relative to cash as a form of currency.
Professor Santana earned her Ph.D. and M.Phil. in marketing from the Stern School of Business at New York University. She holds an M.B.A. from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and a B.S. from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
- Academic Publications
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- Santana, Shelle, Manoj Thomas, and Vicki Morwitz. "The Role of Numbers in the Customer Journey." Journal of Retailing 96, no. 1 (March 2020): 138–154. View Details
- Santana, Shelle, Steven Dallas, and Vicki Morwitz. "Consumer Reactions to Drip Pricing." Marketing Science 39, no. 1 (January–February 2020): 188–210. View Details
- Priya, Raghubir, Morwitz Vicki, and Shelle Santana. "Europoly Money: How Do Tourists Convert Foreign Currencies to Make Spending Decisions?" Journal of Retailing 88, no. 1 (March 2012): 7–19. View Details
- Book Chapters
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- Cooley, Thomas, Xavier Gabaix, Samuel Lee, Thomas Mertens, Vicki Morwitz, Shelle Santana, Anjolein Schmeits, Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, and Samuel Whitelaw. "Consumer Finance Protection." In Regulating Wall Street: The Dodd-Frank Act and the New Architecture of Global Finance, edited by Viral V. Acharya, Thomas F. Cooley, Matthew P. Richardson, and Ingo Walter, 73–84. Wiley, 2010. View Details
- Business Articles
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- Santana, Shelle. "Is the U.S. on Its Way to Becoming a Cashless Society?" Harvard Business Review (website) (July 23, 2019). View Details
- Cases and Teaching Materials
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- Santana, Shelle, and Jill Avery. "Super Bowl Storytelling." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 520-096, March 2020. View Details
- Santana, Shelle, and Jill Avery. "Super Bowl Storytelling." Harvard Business School Case 519-041, December 2018. (Revised August 2019.) View Details
- Santana, Shelle M., and Esel Çekin. "Garanti Payment Systems: Digital Transformation Strategy (B)." Harvard Business School Supplement 519-015, August 2018. View Details
- Santana, Shelle M., and Esel Çekin. "Garanti Payment Systems: Digital Transformation Strategy (A)." Harvard Business School Case 519-014, August 2018. View Details
- Santana, Shelle, Frances X. Frei, and Lauren G. Pickle. "Membership Rewards® from American Express." Harvard Business School Spreadsheet Supplement 518-703, June 2018. (Revised January 2018.) View Details
- Santana, Shelle, Frances X. Frei, and Lauren G. Pickle. "Membership Rewards® from American Express." Harvard Business School Case 518-079, June 2018. (Revised January 2019.) View Details
- Santana, Shelle, Jill Avery, and Christine Snively. "Chase Sapphire: Creating a Millennial Cult Brand." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 518-068, February 2018. View Details
- Santana, Shelle, Jill Avery, and Christine Snively. "Chase Sapphire: Creating a Millennial Cult Brand." Harvard Business School Case 518-024, September 2017. (Revised November 2018.) View Details
- Santana, Shelle, and Sunil Gupta. "Apple Pay." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 517-038, September 2016. View Details
- Gupta, Sunil, Shelle Santana, and Margaret L. Rodriguez. "Apple Pay." Harvard Business School Case 516-027, August 2015. (Revised December 2016.) View Details
- Presentations
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- Santana, Shelle. "How Prices Really Affect Consumers." Harvard Club of New York City, New York, NY, June 8, 2015. View Details
- Research Summary
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In pay-what-you-want settings, typical marketplace dynamics are inverted: buyers, not sellers, determine the price. According to classic economic theory, the rational response of consumers in such situations is to pay nothing, but that is not what happens in actual retail environments. Professor Santana has found that while consumers may vary in their propensity to pay higher or lower prices in general, the context created by sellers can also influence how much consumers will pay. The secret lies in getting consumers who are inclined to pay lower prices to behave in ways that reflect communal (or social) norms versus exchange (or economic) norms when they are making their pricing decisions. Interestingly, even subtle strategies, such as promotional messaging, can affect consumer payments.
Anyone who has shopped for an airline ticket online has experienced drip pricing, as each successive screen seems to reveal another fee throughout the purchasing process. This practice is becoming prevalent in a variety of industries, but its effect on consumers is not well understood. Through a series of experiments, Professor Santana has shown that while drip pricing often increases consumer demand in the short term, it can also create negative feelings among consumers and lower their repeat purchase intentions with the seller in the long run. How then do firms that practice drip pricing stay in business? One answer may be a continual supply of so-called naïve consumers entering the market. Another aspect of Professor Santana’s work in this area involves exploring the efficacy of regulatory measures taken to curb the effects of drip pricing on consumers.
- Additional Information
- Areas of Interest
- In The News