About
Barbara Briers is Professor of Marketing at the University of Antwerp. She holds a PhD in Marketing from the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at the University of Leuven and was previously on the faculty at HEC Paris (2006-2009), Tilburg University (2009-2015 tenured), and Vlerick Business School (2015-2021).
She teaches Market Research, Consumer Behavior, and Advanced Research Methodology at the PhD level. Barbara studies the fundamental drivers of how we make decisions and how we behave as consumers, often in a sustainability context.
Her research focuses on drivers of influence and persuasion, food perception and consumption habits, and the effects of socioeconomic inequalities in a consumer context.
Her work has been published, among others, in the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Consumer Research, the International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Psychological Science. She serves as Area Editor at the International Journal of Research in Marketing and is a member of the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
Research Interests / Expertise
Food consumption
Social marketing
Persuasion and influence
Socioeconomic inequalities
Psychometrics
Societal engagement / Impact
Barbara’s research is of high quality, innovative and useful for a wide audience. The link with socio-economic questions from practice is never far away. Her work is therefore often appreciated by the general public (via media coverage) and the academic community.
Barbara has collaborated with different industry partners and NGO’s. She serves as a Member of the WHO Technical Advisory Group on brand marketing for children since November 2024 and as a Member of the Expert Team of the Federal Council for Sustainable Development (FRDO) since January 2023.
She is program director of the Master in Organization and Management and Chair of the BOF reading committee V (social sciences, law, and FBE).
Selected publications
- D’hondt, J., & Briers, B. (2026). A mouse-tracking classification task to measure the unhealthy= tasty intuition. Behavior Research Methods, 58(2), 37.
- Briers, B., Huh, Y. E., Chan, E., & Mukhopadhyay, A. (2024). Intergenerational effects of lay beliefs: How parents’ unhealthy= tasty intuition influences their children’s food consumption and body mass index. Journal of Consumer Research, 50(6), 1074-1096.
- Briers, B., Huh, Y. E., Chan, E., & Mukhopadhyay, A. (2020). “The unhealthy = tasty belief is associated with BMI through reduced consumption of vegetables: A cross-national and mediational analysis,” Appetite, 150, 104639.