Shi (Shir) Zhang

Biography

Professor Shi Zhang is an expert in consumer behavior and marketing strategy. He has done innovative work in the area of using comparison and feature alignability to form strategies for market entry and marketing communications, and in the area of brand naming and positioning in the international market. 

He is a frequent speaker at professional conferences and seminars and author of articles in leading journals of marketing, consumer behavior and applied psychology. Using experimental methods, Professor Zhang studies marketing problems from a psychological, behavioral perspective. These problems include product differentiation, market entry, brand naming, advertising and communication. His theoretical research interests are in the area of how cognitive representations of information influence consumer cognition and decision-making. In particular, he has studied representations of product differentiating features in consumer preference formation. This research develops a framework to address the role of comparison and feature alignability in forming strategies for market entry and marketing communications.

He has also studied representations of linguistic structures and their impact on information processing, comparative cognitions and decision-making. This research provides frameworks for brand naming and international/cross-cultural consumer research, and it suggests how firms can leverage differences between consumers to formulate brand naming and positioning strategies.

Professor Zhang teaches marketing management (strategy and policy, advertising and communications, and global marketing) in the programs of EMBA, FEMBA and MBA at UCLA Anderson. He also organizes and teaches in the school''s executive education programs. He has consulted for international companies such as Google, Roche, Wrigley''s and China Unicom . Previously, he was on the faculty at Duke University.

Education

Ph.D. Marketing, 1997, Columbia University
Ph.D. Linguistics, 1990, University of Arizona
M.A. Linguistics, 1985, Nankai University, Tianjin, China
B.A. English, 1982, Heilongjiang University, Harbin, China

Interests

Consumer Behavior and Decision Making, Branding, Market Entry, Advertising and Marketing Communications, International Marketing