Paul Andrew Blythe

Paul Blythe is a PhD candidate in the Marketing Division at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder. He received his bachelor’s degree in business administration with a specialization in marketing from The Ohio State University, where he won the 2021 NASBITE International Case Competition and worked as a marketing consultant with the Office of Global Business at The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business and Ohio Small Business Development Center. Paul served in the Ohio and Colorado Army National Guard from 2018 to 2024, holding assignments in transportation and logistics and in public affairs. He deployed to Kuwait in 2020 in support of Operation Inherent Resolve and to Thailand in 2023 for Exercise Hanuman Guardian.

Paul’s research examines consumer judgment and decision-making in morally and socially charged contexts, with a focus on the interplay between hedonic consumption, social judgments, and personal identity. He studies stigmatized consumer marketplace journeys and how sexual and other visceral consumption contexts shape both interpersonal and intrapersonal judgment. His work investigates the psychological mechanisms that underpin consumer behavior in these contexts, with the goal of understanding not only how consumers engage with these markets, but why certain behaviors elicit pronounced social and moral scrutiny. A parallel research stream investigates experiential consumption and how visual properties of marketing communications influence consumer response and market outcomes. He has also contributed to methodological discussions on the use of generative AI in consumer research, with work published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.