Xiaoquan (Michael) Zhang, HKUST Business School

Xiaoquan (Michael) Zhang

Who am I ?

xiaoquan zhang photo

I am an assistant professor at HKUST Business School.

I got my PhD at MIT Sloan School of Management.

I am also the Managing Editor of Ecommerce Research Forum (now ISN Journal at SSRN.com).

My favorate movies are The Shawshank Redemption and Forrest Gump. My favorate cartoon character is Tintin.

My Academic Life

I studied Economics of IS and e-Marketing under the guidance of Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson, Prof. John D.C. Little, and Prof. Chris Dellarocas.

My research interests are:

Online advertising: word-of-mouth, position auctions;
Social media: incentives and biases, information environment for managers/investors;
Information goods: pricing, innovation incentives, long tail

I am fascinated by how we (as individuals and organizations) are able to create, distribute, and consume information. I feel very lucky to live in this era, and to be part of this slice of the history.

I have 4 degrees in Fine Arts, Science and Engineering, and Management.

I've travelled to more than 100 cities in countries including China, Russia, India, UAE, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, UK, and US.

I study marketing implications of information flows that are enabled by the Internet. My recent research papers address the problems of bidding strategies in online advertising auctions, socially efficient distribution of digital contents (e.g music), the impact of online opinion forums on movie box-office performance or video games sales, etc.

I have a pending patent on "Method and System for Using a Point System to Reduce Unsolicited Emails", I propose an Anti-Spam method that relies on setting correct incentives for all the involved parties.

My papers appear in such journals as American Economic Review, Management Science, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Decision Support Systems.

I am an Associate Editor for the following academic journals: Information Systems Research (ISR), Production and Operations Management (POM); Electronic Commerce Research and Applications (ECRA).

Publications

"Cyclical Bid Adjustments in Search-Engine Advertising," (with Jane Feng). Management Science, forthcoming.
[Click Here for the Working Paper Version]

"Group Size and Incentives to Contribute: A Natural Experiment at Chinese Wikipedia," (with Feng Zhu). American Economic Review, 101(4), June 2011, pp 1601-1615.
[Click Here for the Working Paper Version]

"Impact of Online Consumer Reviews on Sales: The Moderating Role of Product and Consumer Characteristics," (with Feng Zhu). Journal of Marketing, 74(2), March 2010, pp 133-148.
[Click Here for the Working Paper Version]

"Sampling of Information Goods," (with Alex Wang). Decision Support Systems, 48(1), December 2009, pp 14-22.
[Click Here for the Working Paper Version]

"Exploring the Value of Online Product Reviews in Forecasting Sales: The Case of Motion Pictures," (with Chris Dellarocas and Neveen Awad). Journal of Interactive Marketing, 21(4), 2007, pp 2-20.
(Journal of Interactive Marketing 2008 Best Paper Award.)
[Click Here for the Working Paper Version]

"Innovation Incentives for Information Goods," (with Erik Brynjolfsson). Innovation Policy and the Economy eds. Adam B. Jaffe, Josh Lerner and Scott Stern, 2007 vol. 7.