Y. Rin Yoon

Welcome! I’m an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa.

I study how people think and feel at the moment of transaction, and how we can design payment and incentive systems that work better for people and for society.

This work has been recognized with an Honorable Mention for the 2025 John A. Howard/AMA Doctoral Dissertation Award and the ACR’s Best Paper Award (2025).

I earned a Ph.D. in Marketing from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, in Ithaca, NY—a town I wrote a short ode to in my dissertation acknowledgments. I also hold a bachelor’s degree with college and departmental honors in Communication Studies with a minor in Statistics from UCLA, and a master’s degree in Marketing from Korea University Business School.

More about me?

Before entering academia, I worked in consulting with clients including Pfizer and Hyundai Motor Company HQs. I also hosted and produced a local radio show in Korea (which flew far under the radar), where I mono logued on behavioral science, offbeat science and tech news, Korean poetry, and experimental philosophy.

Oct 11, 2025	Received a Best Paper Award at the 2025 ACR in Washington, D.C. What a highlight!
Apr 11, 2025	Defended my dissertation, Consumer Psychology at the Moment of Transaction. Huge thanks to Suzanne Shu, Kaitlin Woolley, and Dave Pizarro for being on my committee!
Nov 14, 2024	My paper “Increasing Hotel Loyalty Through Psychological Ownership” (with Joann Peck and Suzanne B. Shu) has been accepted in the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly.
May 12, 2024	I presented my work on the Buy Now, Pay Later payment method in a plenary session at the 2024 Boulder Summer Conference on Consumer Financial Decision Making.
Jan 26, 2024	My paper “The Interactive Effect of Incentive Salience and Prosocial Motivation on Prosocial Behavior” (with Kaitlin Woolley) has been accepted in Psychological Science.