University of Florida marketing professor’s research lauded for significant societal impact by international organization
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Research at the University of Florida Warrington College of Business is well-regarded by academics and industry leaders for its ability to advance business as well as society, as exemplified by research recently highlighted by the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD Global).
JCPenney Eminent Scholar and Professor of Marketing Jinhong Xie’s research was cited by the EFMD Global’s task force on impacts of business school research as an illustration example at the organization’s EQUIS committee meeting in Paris. The EFMD Global is a global accrediting, networking and professional development organization that is dedicated to the management development. The University of Florida is one of EFMD Global’s 972 institutional members, representing 30,000 management development professionals in 90 countries worldwide.
“My research is strongly motivated by marketplace problems that confront consumers,” Xie said. “I am delighted when my research has some practical use for shoppers or policy makers.”
Xie’s work is focused on consumer protection and market transparency. Specifically, she investigates how firms’ strategies, like pricing, advertising and environmental policy, impact consumers and social welfare.
One of her recent papers, published in Marketing Science with two co-authors, highlights how Amazon misled customers on pricing by pretending to offer a discount on various products when they had actually just increased the price. Another of her papers, soon to be published in Management Science, addresses the inflation of online product ratings that occurs when sellers offer incentives for people to review their products. Regulators have proposed to fix this problem by requiring that reviewers disclose when they have a material relationship with the seller. Xie and her coauthors found that disclosure is ineffective. Even with disclosure, ratings by incentivized reviewers are still inflated and consumers are still harmed.
Over the course of her career, Xie been recognized multiple times for her significant research contributions. In 2023, her paper on corporate strategy in relation to environmental reputation among consumers won the inaugural Management Science Best Paper Award in Marketing from the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS). She has been a finalist for the Marketing Science Long Term Impact Award, the Journal of Marketing Research William F. O’Dell Award, the American Marketing Association/Marketing Science Institute H. Paul Root Award, and the Frank M. Bass Dissertation Paper Award from INFORMS. Xie won the John D.C. Little Best Paper Award recognizing the best marketing paper published in Marketing Science or Management Science in 2001.
Xie has been with the University of Florida since 1995. She received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Tsinghua University, an M.S. in Optimal Control from the Second Academy of the Ministry of Astronautics in China, and master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University.
