PHD Student's Dissertation Proposal Receives the Dunn Award from AAAs

Jie Zhang's dissertation proposal titled "Exploring Antecedents and Consequences of eMavens in Their Electronic Word-of-Mouth Communication: A Cross-Cultural Examination in the US and Chinese Cultural Contexts" has been selected for this year's American Academy of Advertising dissertation proposal award. She will receive the "Dunn Award," which is designated for outstanding dissertation proposals in the area of international advertising. Her dissertation is being supervised by Dr. Wei-Na Lee.

Before joining the Ph.D. program at UT Austin, Jie worked as a media buyer at an advertising agency in Shanghai. She has first-authored a number of conference papers presented at AEJMC, AAA, AMA, and AAA Asia-Pacific. Her work is published in American Journal of Business, International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing. Her current research interests are electronic word-of-mouth communication, online branded entertainment, online social networking, and cross-cultural comparisons of advertising. Her dissertation focuses on a cross-cultural comparison of consumer influencers in electronic word-of-mouth communication between the US and China.