Sahar Bakr
MSc Applied Biopharmaceutical Biotechnology and Entrepreneurship (ABBE); BSc Pharmacy.
Room: B26 (South Building)
Tel: +44 (0) 115 8467751
Email: Sahar.Bakr@nottingham.ac.uk
Current Status: Registered
Year of Registration: 2018
Expected Completion Date: /09/2021
Primary Funding Source:self-funded
Research Topic:Exploring the Impact of Interacting with Wearable Fitness-Trackers for Physical Activity
Research Details:The wearables market is one of the fastest growing markets in the world (Mintel, 2019). Whilst it is often suggested that wearable activity-trackers offer various benefits for health, fitness, and wellbeing, evidence of their impact, if any, on users' health and physical activity is relatively limited. My PhD is coming at this area i.e. the role of wearables in supporting physical-activity and healthy lifestyles, from a different angle. By capturing practices users perform when interacting with activity-tracking devices we can understand their relationship with the device, and how the device influences them to increase and/or monitor physical activity. Adopting a practice theory perspective, and integrating other models from the broad areas of consumer, and service, marketing provides us with the theoretical tools necessary to emphasise doing over thinking, to distinguish between the observable behaviour and the underlying elements that constitute practices as entities and, ultimately, whether the continuous use of activity-trackers results in any positive, or negative impact, on users' physical activity at all (Shove and Pantzar, 2005; Schau, Muñiz and Arnould, 2009). Hence arguably, this research will provide an alternative perspective of how wearables' developers, public health policy makers, and academic researchers view the technology and its use.
Research Supervisor/s: Heidi Winklhofer and
Sally Hibbert
Department: Marketing
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