Anouk Bergner is an affiliated postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Behavioral Science and Technology and the TechX lab at the University of St. Gallen. Her research is at the intersection of human-computer interaction and psychology, exploring how new technologies, such as smart objects and conversational interfaces (e.g., chatbots and voice bots), influence consumer behavior. Her research aims at shedding light on how our affective experience with these increasingly humanized technologies fundamentally shapes decision-making and leverages a range of diverse methodologies from experimental research to deep contextual language models.
Anouk earned her bachelor’s cum laude from Princeton University, where she studied Cognitive Psychology, and her Master’s with distinction from the London School of Economics in Decision Sciences. After spending several years in research-oriented roles in industry (at Procter & Gamble and Coty), she returned to academia in 2018 to pursue her PhD, which she defended in 2022.
Her research has been published in leading academic journals such as the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and Cognition, as well as practitioner-oriented outlets, such as the NIM Marketing Intelligence Review. She has served as an ad hoc reviewer for several journals including Management Science and the Journal of Business Research.
Outside of the lab, you can find Anouk mainly outdoors trying to keep up with her two kids, hiking with her dog, and skiing in the Alps.
See her Full CV for more information.
Selected Publications
- Bergner, A., Hartmann, J., & Hildebrand, C. (2021). Conferring Minds to Machines: A Deep Learning Approach to Mind Perception, Trust, and Task Delegation. Proceedings of the Society for Consumer Psychology Conference.
- Bergner, A., (2020). Adaptive Sales Automation: Chatbots as Personalized and Scalable Sales Agents. Marketing Review St. Gallen.
- Hildebrand, C., & Bergner, A. (2020). Conversational Robo Advisors as Surrogates of Trust: Onboarding Experience, Firm Perception, and Consumer Financial Decision Making. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.
- Bergner, A., Oppenheimer, D. M., & Detre, G. (2019). VAMP (Voting Agent Model of Preferences): A Computational Model of Individual Multi-Attribute Choice.
- Bergner, A., Hildebrand, C., & Häubl, G. (2019). Conversational Interfaces as Persuasion Instruments: Implications for Consumer Choice and Brand Perceptions (Special Session on “The Machine Age of Consumer Research: How Robot-Based Expression Modalities Alter Perception and Choice”). Proceedings of the Association for Consumer Research Conference.
- Bergner, A., Hildebrand, C., & Häubl, G. (2019). Machine Talk: How Conversational Interfaces Promote Brand Intimacy and Influence Consumer Choice. Proceedings of the Society for Consumer Psychology Conference,Savannah, USA.
- Hildebrand, C., & Bergner, A. (2019). Detrimental Trust in Automation: How Conversational Robo Advisors Leverage Trust and Miscalibrated Risk Taking. Proceedings of the Society for Consumer Psychology Conference, Savannah, USA.
