This year, the Department of Marketing has brought in two new professors: Marisabel Romero, and George Watson. We want to give them both a warm welcome to the CSU campus — and introduce them to the Ram Community.

George Watson

Watson says he’s always enjoyed the environment of educational institutions. He received his Master’s degree at the University of California, at San Diego, and Ph.D. from the Foster School of Business in Seattle.

“As an undergraduate at Stanford, I worked as a research assistant for a professor in the business school,” he says. “So I saw what he was doing, what kind of control he had over research topics, and I found it very interesting.”

Before pursuing teaching himself, Watson worked as a marketing research and political communications consultant in New York City for about two years. He says the work was fascinating, but “at the same time, I was pretty sure I wanted to get a Ph.D. and get back to a school environment,” he says. “They’re beautiful places. And you have students who are interested in learning. In general, the atmosphere is very nice.”

He works to bring his real-world experiences into the classroom, to help expose students to the realities of thinking about business perspectives in achieving goals. Meanwhile, his research focus has been in the areas of marketing channels and customer loyalty.

Watson and his wife have friends and family in Colorado, so as he says, it was a “win-win-win to have them nearby, be in Colorado, and join a great faculty here.”

At CSU, he says, “Other faculty members have been very helpful as I navigate the expectations in the classroom. Everyone here has really been great in helping me make the transition from Ph.D. student, to faculty member. And I enjoy interacting with the students — I’ve had a great first semester.”

He and his wife live in Old Town, and enjoy visiting the local breweries and restaurants, and taking walks with their dog along the river.

Marisabel Romero  

Romero received a Master’s degree from Baylor University, and completed her Ph.D. at the University of South Florida.

Originally from Honduras, she spent several years managing new product development there, for the Coca-Cola brand’s Minute Maid and Nestea product lines. Additionally, her background includes branding, and development of consumer campaigns. She’s now leveraging that experience toward both her research and teaching, in the area of consumer behavior.

In the classroom, Romero says, “I really try to give students hands-on application…. I’m teaching them how marketers function on a day-to-day basis, and how they relate to consumers.”

Outside of class, her research has been focused on how visual elements affect consumers in terms of financial decisions, food consumption, and more. Recently, she studied how human-like shapes (for instance, the silhouette of a Coke bottle) can make a person spend more.

Her findings: “If you’re exposed to a thin human-like shape versus a wide one,” she says, “you’re more likely to spend more — but this is qualified by your personal weight. People with a higher weight were more likely to be affected by it.”

Romero says her first few months at CSU have been nothing but good. “Everyone has been very warm and kind,” she says. “I’m very thankful for that. It feels like a community here.”

Now, she’s also looking forward to exploring more of Colorado this spring, with her husband and their daughter, who is a year and a half old.