- Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Portland
Beth Leavenworth DuFault is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Portland who studies what happens when markets move into domains long understood as apart from, or above, market logics, and that feel sacred, moral, or simply not supposed to be about money. The domains she's studied include religion, education, science, and medicine. Within domains such as these, her work examines how people navigate markets charged with emotional weight and ethical consequence, especially where care, trust, and responsibility are at stake.
Her research traces how metrics, technologies, and persuasive narratives translate deeply human concerns such as health, safety, expertise, and credibility into things that can be measured, scored, optimized, and governed through markets. Working across contexts such as infant care technologies, healthcare evaluation systems, consumer credit scores, and the public communication of science, she shows how market tools quietly redistribute authority, reshape moral expectations, and change how individuals and institutions are judged.
Beth’s research appears in Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Management, Consumption, Markets & Culture, and Sustainability, as well as public venues like The Sociological Review Magazine.
Experience
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2024–presentAssistant Professor of Marketing, University of Portland
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2021–2024Adjunct Professor of Sociology, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador
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2016–2021Assistant Professor of Marketing, State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany
Education
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University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), BA Sociology/Mathematics
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2016University of Arizona, PhD/Marketing/Management/Sociology
Publications
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2026Journal of Business Venturing Insights, An integrated framework for entrepreneurial alertness and market creation: User entrepreneurs and the direct-to-consumer biometric infant monitor market
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2025Sociological Review Magazine, What's in a name
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2025Journal of Marketing Management, Science as status: early marketing activities of Newtonian entrepreneurs and the new taste regime of polite society in eighteenth-century England
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2024Journal of Customer Behavior, Simplifying complexity to reveal the profound
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2024Sociological Review Magazine, Catch of the day: How a social enterprise based on fishing helped Newfoundlanders reanimate their cultural identity
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2022Sustainability, Social enterprise as a broker of identity resources
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2020Consumption Markets & Culture, Self-quantification and the datapreneurial consumer identity
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2019Journal of Customer Behavior, Home for Christmas
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2016International Journal of nonprofit and voluntary sector marketing, Millennials and boomers: Increasing alumni affinity and intent to give by target market segmentation
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2014Journal of Consumer Research, The marketization of religion: Field, capital, and consumer identity
Professional Memberships
- Alpha Kappa Delta International Sociological Honor Society
- American Sociological Association
- American Marketing Association
- Association for Consumer Research
Contact Beth for
- General
- Media request
- Speaking request
- Consulting / Advising
- Research collaboration
- Research supervision
- Location: Portland, Oregon, U.S.
- Website
- LinkedIn: bethdufault
- X (formerly Twitter): @ProfDPhD
- Article Feed
- ORCID
- Joined
