Jonah Berger, PhD

James G. Campbell Assistant Professor of Marketing, Wharton School

What makes ideas viral and products spread contagiously? Professor Jonah Berger studies social epidemics, or how products, ideas, and behaviors catch on and become popular as well as die out and become abandoned. He examines how individual decision making and social dynamics (e.g., social influence) between people generate collective outcomes such as social contagion and trends.

Most recently, Professor Berger’s research examined how consumers’ desire to communicate, or signal, certain identities to others influences when people abandon products. In other recent research, he examined how subtle cues in everyday environments influence consumer decision making and the success of products and ideas.