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Professor Robert Aitken holds the position of Professor in the Department of Marketing at the Otago Business School, University of Otago. His academic degrees comprise a BA from The Open University Britain, BEd (Hons) from the University of Southampton, MPhil from the University of Exeter, and PhD from the University of Otago. Before joining Otago, he lectured in Media and Cultural Studies in the UK. At Otago, he specializes in teaching advertising, branding, communications, and media-related marketing, including courses MART 210 Consumer Behaviour and MART 574 Advertising and Branding. He has supervised 11 PhD students, acted as external PhD examiner 11 times, internal examiner 8 times, and convened 10 PhD examinations. Prominent appointments include former President of the Australia and New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC), Chair of Age Concern Otago (in his fourth term), Executive Board Member of Age Concern New Zealand (Chair of Finance and Communications Committee, led re-branding), Executive Member of the Otago Third Age Trust, and Chair of Consumer.org (elected 2020).
Aitken's research focuses on marketing to children, particularly the impact of commercialisation and materialistic values on childhood; sustainability and consumption, balancing business profits with resource protection through CSR and business ethics; branding, especially place branding and meaning negotiation; as well as culture and identity, ideology, hegemony, audience theory, symbolic consumption, popular culture, not-for-profit business, social marketing, and service-dominant logic (SDL). He co-initiated the Otago Forum on SDL with Associate Professor David Ballantyne, co-convened its third iteration, and led editing of special issues in Marketing Theory (vol. 6, no. 3) and Journal of Marketing Management from forum papers. Key publications feature "Consume less, live well: Examining the dimensions and moderators of the relationship between voluntary simplicity and wellbeing" (Journal of Macromarketing, 2025, with L. Watkins and L.P. Li), a Lancet Planetary Health paper on children's commercial brandscape, and works on organic food labelling and sustainable consumption visions. He co-received the Judges' and People's Award for Best Film at the European Association for Consumer Research Conference, London. Aitken's contributions extend to advancing SDL discourse and advocating for consumer rights.
Explore University of Otago's findings on how voluntary simplicity boosts hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing more than wealth, with insights for New Zealand's higher education community.
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