Professor Lau-Gesk’s research interests fall into two areas:

• the influence of affect or emotions in consumer decision making
• the role of culture and self in consumer persuasion and judgment.

In both areas, she examines how consumers evaluate, interpret and manage complex conflicting experiences or decisions often encountered in everyday consumer life. Her research focuses on complex affective experiences where multiple emotions arise within a consumer context such as in advertising or actual consumption experiences. In the second area, Professor Lau-Gesk studies consumer self complexity due to cross and within cultural influences. Past research has looked at the impact of single factors on decision making despite the fact that many real life issues and experiences are much more complex, less straightforward and mixed. Professor Lau-Gesk's work in both areas illuminates the importance of studying more complex issues by resolving conflicts in the literature and offering new, oftentimes counterintuitive, insight to existing marketing theory and practice. Professor Lau-Gesk's research appears in Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology and Marketing Letters, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.