Biography

Liad Weiss is a Professor of Marketing at Warwick Business School. His research asks what a consumer's identity is actually made of. That question is becoming more pressing as familiar anchors of identity — stable groups, fixed roles, lifelong institutions — loosen, leaving individuals with more of the work of defining and sustaining who they are.

While identity has often been understood through our ties to others — the groups we belong to, the relationships we hold, and the people we measure ourselves against — Weiss develops a complementary account centred on the individual's own engagement with the world: what we have, what we do, and what we attend to.

His work on Egocentric Categorization develops the first of these. It shows how consumers use the self as a cognitive reference point, sorting products and brands in relation to who they are. This self-focused perspective shapes cognition, perception, and behaviour, including memory, product and self-judgments, choice, and willingness to pay.

His more recent work extends this account from what we have toward what we do and attend to, often identifying conditions under which conventional assumptions about identity and consumer behaviour break down.

Published in leading journals including the Journal of Consumer Research and Journal of Marketing Research, his research has implications for segmentation, targeting, positioning, branding, and consumer–brand relationships.

Research Interests

Weiss’s research programme develops three complementary routes into consumer identity: what we have, what we do, and what we attend to. His published work centres on the first two; newer projects extend into the third and toward a broader theory of consumer value.

Published Research  

Identity through what we have

Egocentric Categorization and Product Judgment
Weiss & Johar, 2013, Journal of Consumer Research

When do consumers judge products they own less favourably than those they do not own? This research challenges the assumption that ownership automatically elevates product evaluation, identifying conditions under which owning a product can actually lead to less favourable judgments.

Self-Judgment Influenced by Product Ownership
Weiss & Johar, 2016, Journal of Consumer Research

What we own can shape not only how we see products, but also how we see ourselves. This research shows that owning a product can influence self-perception, including judgments of personal traits and behaviours.

Enhancing Brand Loyalty with Person-Related Features
Weiss, 2022, Journal of Consumer Research

Should brands communicate differently with existing customers and prospective ones? This research shows that describing product features in person-related terms — such as “beauty” or “strength” — can increase preference and willingness to pay among existing customers relative to equivalent product-centred descriptions such as “aesthetics” or “durability.”

Identity through what we do

Consumer Identity and Brand Preference
Weiss & Tanner, 2025, Journal of Consumer Research

Does a stronger identity always mean stronger preference for the brands linked to it? Not necessarily.

This research distinguishes identities that depend on particular products from identities that can be enacted independently of them. When a product-independent identity is prominent, preference for identity-linked brands can weaken and, among more materialistic consumers, can even reverse toward dissociative brands.

The work marks a shift from understanding identity through what consumers own toward understanding identity through what they enact, with implications for targeting, brand switching, and the use of consumers’ expressed interests in marketing.

Current and Developing Work  

Being by Doing: Reoptive Identity Theory

A runner who skips a few runs may begin to doubt whether they are still a runner, while a citizen who skips a few votes rarely doubts whether they are still a voter. Why does inactivity threaten some identities but not others?

In ongoing work, Weiss and Jennifer Argo develop a class of identities they term reoptive identities: identities sustained by repeatedly opting in through the activity itself. For such identities, doing is not merely an expression of who one is; it is part of what keeps the identity in existence. The theory has implications for understanding how identities are maintained, strengthened, and lost through repeated action.

Attention as Identity

Attention may be one of the most intimately formative aspects of identity, yet one of the least accounted for.

Having leaves an object and doing leaves a change — traces the world can register. Attention leaves almost none. We can point to what we own and recall what we did, yet rarely say where a day’s attention actually went, or what, cumulatively, it made of us.

This work examines attention as a mode of self-construction in its own right: not simply what consumers notice, but how the repeated allocation of attention contributes to who they become. Weiss is developing these ideas through conceptual work, a continuing series of essays on attention, and a book project.

Beyond Hedonic and Utilitarian Value

Marketing commonly distinguishes between utilitarian and hedonic benefits: whether an offering is useful or pleasurable. In ongoing work, Weiss and Jennifer Argo develope a second dimension of consumer value: whether a benefit terminates in an outcome or implicates the consumer’s identity.

Treating these as orthogonal dimensions produces a broader framework for understanding consumer value, with implications for positioning, advertising, brand loyalty, and offering design.

Across this work, Weiss challenges established assumptions about how consumer identity is formed, maintained, and expressed, while developing implications for how organisations understand, segment, and engage consumers.