Key details
Dr Yakun Zhang
Senior Lecturer in Advertising & Marketing Communications, Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Digital Marketing & Advertising
Yakun Zhang is a Senior Lecturer in Advertising and Marketing Communications at the University of Greenwich, where she has worked since 2018. She holds a PhD in Marketing from Durham University, an MSc in Management Science (Decision Sciences) from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BSc in International Business and Management from Aston University. Before joining Greenwich, Yakun gained teaching experience as a Teaching Assistant at Durham University Business School.
Her research focuses on consumer behaviour and consumer psychology, with particular interests in advertising appeals, communication strategies, and the role of technology in shaping consumer perceptions. She has received competitive research funding, including support from the Academy of Marketing, and actively contributes to the academic community through capacity-building initiatives for early career researchers.
Responsibilities within the university
Yakun contributes to teaching, supervising, and tutoring at Greenwich, both at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Yakun welcomes prospective PhD candidates with similar research interests.
Awards
- Lecturer of the Year, Student-Led Teaching Awards, University of Greenwich (2021).
- Awarded £4,200 under the Academy of Marketing / Marketing Trust ECR Workshop Scheme 2025 to organise and host the workshop “Beyond Rankings: Reclaiming Research Integrity in Marketing Scholarship.”
- Awarded £5,000 from the Academy of Marketing Research Funding 2025 to deliver the project “Synthetic Faces, Real Impact: Visual Empathy and Curiosity in AI-Powered Sustainability Ads.”
- Awarded £1,500 under the Academy of Marketing / Marketing Trust ECR Workshop Scheme 2022 to organise and host the workshop “Building Resilience and Getting Published in Top Journals for ECRs.”
Recognition
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
- Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education
- Recognised Practitioner in Advising (RPA), United Kingdom Advising and Tutoring Association (UKAT)
- WSET Level 2 Award in Wines, Wine & Spirit Education Trust
Research / Scholarly interests
Yakun’s research interests lie in consumer behaviour and consumer psychology, with a particular focus on information processing and decision-making.
Her work examines how sensory stimuli, such as images and sounds, can enhance advertising effectiveness. She also conducts research on impulse buying, tourism advertising, and digital advertising strategies. Yakun welcomes collaboration with researchers in related fields and is happy to hear from prospective PhD candidates with similar interests.
Recent publications
- Zhang, Y., Xiao, S. H., & Nicholson, M. (2020). The Effects of Dynamic Product Presentation and Contextual Backgrounds on Consumer Purchase Intentions: Perspectives from the Load Theory of Attention and Cognitive Control. Journal of Advertising, 49(5), 592–612. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2020.1789014
- Zhang, Y., Kokkranikal, J., & Parker, B. (2023). Do consumers go through imagery processing processes differently? The interplay between imagery-evoking level and multidimensional mental imagery in airline ads processing. Journal of Marketing Communications, 31(4), 393–421. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527266.2023.2246036
Presentations
- Zhang, Yakun (2025) Authentic learning through partnership: co-creating marketing solutions with SMEs in an AI-enhanced context. In: Learning and Teaching Festival 2025 "Transformative Education: Integrating Perspectives for Inclusive and Sustainable Excellence", 26th June, 2025, University of Greenwich, London.
- Zhang, Yakun (2024) Exploring the role of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in Higher Education: values, creativity, and cultural perspectives. In: Learning & Teaching Festival 2024 (LTF2024) - The Big Picture: Meta-learning, 20th June 2024, University of Greenwich, London. (Unpublished)
- Connor, Emma and Zhang, Yakun (2023) The interaction effect of ingredient presentation and message appeal type on affective responses and willingness to buy home coffee: a moderated mediation model from the perspective of SOR theory. In: EMAC annual conference 2023, 22nd - 23rd May 2023, Odense, Denmark.
- Zhang, Y., & Xiao, S. (2019). The interaction effect between online product presentation dynamism and background contextualization on engagement and analytical fluency. 48th EMAC 2019 Annual Conference, University of Hamburg, Germany, May 29-31, 2019. Published in: Proceedings of the EMAC Annual Conference 2019. EMAC ISBN 9783982114606
- Zhang, Y., & Xiao, S. (2018). Harmony is not always better: The effect of visual presentation and content congruence on imagery fluency. In: The 2018 American Marketing Association/American Collegiate Retailing Association (ACRA/AMA) Triennial Conference, 6 – 9 June 2018, Toronto, Canada.
- Zhang, Y., & Xiao, S. (2017). To buy but not to keep: The impact of mental imagery discrepancy in E-commerce product return. EMAC 2017: Leaving Footprints, University of Groningen, The Netherlands, 23-26 May, 2017. Published in: Proceedings of the EMAC Annual Conference 2017. EMAC ISBN 9789036799126