Li Jiang

BADM 3401 - Contemporary Marketing Management

This is the introductory marketing course that is required for business majors, but has attracted students from all disciplines. This course is a foundation of advanced marketing courses, and covers 20 book chapters. The topics include market research, consumer behavior, market strategy, product, pricing, distribution channel, promotion, etc. This course combines theoretical framework with practical exercise, and emphasizes critical thinking and experiential learning.

MKTG 3142 - Consumer Behavior

Consumer behavior is the study of how and why individuals and groups make purchasing decisions. The course incorporates psychology, sociology, and anthropology perspectives, and teaches students ways to research customer behavior so that it can be used to enhance their marketing strategy.

MKTG 6242 Buyer Behavior

• Ph.D. in Marketing, University of California Los Angeles 

• Privacy and Self-Disclosure
• Coping and Decision Strategies

About My Research

I am an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the George Washington University School of Business. I got my Ph.D. from UCLA.

I specialize in two primary areas: (1) information privacy, an interdisciplinary field emphasizing the ethical management of personal data, and (2) coping and decision strategies—empowering consumers to navigate emotions and decisions.

In my first research stream, I delve into information privacy, a burgeoning subject garnering significant attention from both businesses and policymakers.  Firstly, I investigate privacy decision-making, and contribute to the literature by highlighting its inherent malleability, particularly in marketing contexts such as consumer interactions with artificial intelligence service agents, and how consumers respond to data sharing requests from mobile apps. This underscores the importance of contextual factors in privacy decision-making. Furthermore, I examine interdependent privacy—the sharing of others’ data (e.g., contacts)—an emerging area in privacy research. I find that while warning messages have limited efficacy in discouraging sharing of others’ data, a habit intervention introducing friction proves to be a potent strategy. This result sheds light on the limitations of existing privacy policies reliant on informed consent to regulate data sharing.

Secondly, I investigate the impact of privacy regulation and privacy-enhancing technologies. I demonstrate that the associated costs of privacy regulation are manageable. This suggests that it is feasible to achieve a balance between safeguarding privacy and maximizing firms’ profits.

In my second research stream, I investigate coping and decision strategies, exploring individual differences (i.e., age, personality) and contextual factors that lead to distinct coping strategies among consumers, and developing a methodological toolkit to measure individual differences in decision strategies. Furthermore, I devise interventions to empower consumers in navigating challenging consumption situations. This stream of research has led to publications in top journals including the Journal of Consumer Research (UTD24, FT50, ABS4*), Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (ABS4), and Management Science (UTD24, FT50, ABS4*).

A noteworthy contribution from this stream is the development of the “Preference for Moderation Scale” (PFM, lead article, Journal of Consumer Research, 2021), which captures individuals' trait-like tendency to prefer options that hold middle or moderate positions as decision strategies. The scale reliably predicts the use of compromise and balancing strategies, as well as real-world financial outcomes and online reviewing behavior. The PFM scale enables prediction of which market segments are most susceptible to decision contexts. This scale, a valuable toolkit for researchers in the field, has been widely adopted by various scholars and has been translated into multiple languages.

View my Google Citation page

Invited Talks

• 2022 University of Virginia McIntire School of Commerce
• 2021 Chinese University of Hong Kong
• 2021 Rutgers University - The State University of New Jersey, United States
• 2017 George Washington University
• 2017 University at Albany - State University of New York, United States
• 2016 Carnegie Mellon University, United States
• 2016 The University of Texas at Austin, United States
• 2016 The City University of New York (CUNY) – Baruch College, United States
• 2016 Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
• 2016 University of Massachusetts Amherst, Unites States
• 2016 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, United States
• 2016 University of Massachusetts Boston, United States
• 2015 Ren Min University, China
• 2015 Sun Yat-Sen University, China
• 2015 University of Technology Sydney, Australia
• 2015 Monash University, Australia
• 2015 Peking University HSBC Business School, China
• 2014 University of Houston, United States

Media Coverage for Research

The New York Times, Time, Science Daily, Scientific American, Springer, Hearst, New York Post, JoVe, Canadian Public Broadcaster, CJAD 800 Radio Interview, Dow Jones & Company, Springer Nature, AAAS, Furthermore, Women’s Health, Bustle, Medical Daily, Steemit, Brightsurf, Jejez, Hello Giggles, Medicine News Line, Big Think, Daily Mail Online, The University Network, Harvard Business Review

Mentoring Students

• Naixin Zhu, Ph.D. in Economics, The George Washington University, Dissertation Committee Member 2020-2023
  Placement: Data Scientist at Meta