Ruth Rettie
| Gender | Female |
|---|---|
| Location | Walton on Thames, Surrey |
| Introduction | I am Professor of Social Marketing at Kingston University. My first discipline was philosophy, and I have an MBA, but I am mainly a social scientist with a PhD in Sociology. I joined Kingston University after ten years as a brand manager for Cadbury, Kraft and Unilever. I am Director of the Behaviour and Practice Research Group at Kingston. Projects include CHARM (www.projectcharm.info) a sustainability project that investigates the impact of feedback on performance and Smart Communities (www.smartcommunities.org.uk) a community and school based action research project on energy demand reduction. Our work applies sociological, social psychology and social marketing perspectives to behaviour change using interventions based on digital technologies. We are particularly interested in the way in which behaviour is influenced by what is understood to be normal, and how ideas about what is normal change can be shaped by social marketing. We use digital technologies (internet, mobile phone, Facebook) in areas such as energy consumption, sustainability, healthy lifestyles, diabetes and flood risk. |