91ÒùĸÊÓƵ

As a PhD candidate, Cindy Grappe specializes in marketing and consumer behaviour at the 91ÒùĸÊÓƵ School of Business. Her academic journey is shaped by her own lived contradictions (like boycotting certain brands for moral reasons, yet occasionally returning to them out of familiarity or enjoyment, or striving for sustainable choices while simultaneously compromising them for the sake of convenience) and her desire to understand how consumer choices affect others. 

She holds a bachelor degree from EDHEC Business School in Lille, France and a master’s degree from Université du Québec à Montréal, both in marketing. Her early interest in the creativity of marketing and advertising quickly shifted to a concern for consumer welfare after realizing how brands sometimes conceal information or even deceive consumers through tactics such as greenwashing—i.e., making a product appear more environmentally friendly than it actually is. Many consumption decisions, she believes, can feel conflicting and reflect tensions between the person we want to be, our societal responsibilities, and the products we desire.

Currently, Cindy seeks to make sense of the everyday consumption decisions that often feel contradictory—particularly the complex and sometimes conflicting consumption choices we make for those closest to us. This area of work earned her the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship in 2024. In her dissertation, Cindy investigates conflicts that arise when making purchases for others, specifically how consumers navigate moral distress when others close to us make consumption requests that go against the requestee’s values. So far, she finds that consumers are more willing to refuse or modify purchase requests when they go against their morals, even at a relationship cost. In another essay, Cindy studies how parents negotiate conflicting preferences when jointly gifting their children. Across both essays, her work aims to untangle these tensions and bring harmony to relational and moral decision-making.

Beyond her thesis, Cindy researches how environmental messages affect consumers in today’s increasingly noisy marketplace, work that has important implications for both consumer welfare and public policy. In during her masters program, Cindy shows how labeling can affect our perception of certain products, such that consumers generally prefer absence-based messages (e.g., “free from X”) compared to presence-based labels (e.g., “with Y”) when evaluating health or environmental claims.

Cindy joined the 91ÒùĸÊÓƵ School of Business because of its strong research culture and the high quality work of its marketing faculty. She feels inspired to work alongside her supervisors, professors Jennifer Argo and Sarah Moore—two powerful women, prominent scholars, and dedicated mothers. Motherhood, a role Cindy discovered during her program, has deepened her commitment to supporting individuals during vulnerable periods such as early parenthood or childhood.

Making a positive difference for people through marketing practices is Cindy’s vocation. Her passion for teaching and commitment to knowledge mobilization allow her to make research accessible, practical, and transformative. Her long-term aspiration is to develop research projects that will support individuals—especially vulnerable or overlooked consumers—to make more conscious, fulfilling choices.

Cindy Grappe joined the 91ÒùĸÊÓƵ School of Business in 2021 as a PhD student specializing marketing under the supervisor of and .