Published: 2020-04-06
Advertising is morphing from traditional media placements to digital marketing, with companies increasingly leveraging the popularity of celebrities and social media influencers to reach niche audiences. The intricate processes behind these marketing activities is a research focus Professor Kineta Hung is keenly pursuing.
Hung, of the Department of Communication Studies, is a leading scholar of advertising. Her research forays have extended beyond advertising and media studies to include artificial intelligence, strategic communication, national image management, communication engagement, and most recently, celebrity endorsement and influential marketing. Her work on celebrity/influencer endorsement applies a relational-bonding approach to explore audience motivations and their modes of bonding with celebrity endorsers. Her invited article for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication explicates the processes and effects of celebrity endorsement on consumers, by synthesising insights from works on celebrity fandom, media entertainment and transportation theory.
One study rated Hung as one of the world’s 25 most prolific researchers in top-ranking advertising journals. Hung is a recipient of five major competitive grants and multiple awards for her contributions to research. She has been invited to discuss advertising topics at numerous media and academic talks, locally and internationally. Hung currently serves on the Research Committee of the American Academy of Advertising and on the editorial boards of two top advertising journals. She is an honorary professor at the Communication University of China.
Her enthusiasm for advertising research remains undimmed as she continually finds new avenues to explore. “Some research projects are developed based on gaps in the theory. Others are developed based on an interesting phenomenon I have observed, read about or heard of,” she notes. Hung’s current interest on branding in China was piqued because of a dearth of scholarship into the Chinese context. Hung’s (2020) book chapter examined the motives, characteristics, and marketing impacts of celebrity fans in China. She found that, in addition to buying celebrity-related products, fans undertake essential marketing activities that used to be exclusive to agency management and marketers of endorsed products. These changes, according to Hung, elevate fans to the status of marketing partners. Built on years of original research, her 2020 co-authored book, Dynamic Growth of Chinese Firms in the Global Market: Challenges, Strategies and Implications, traces the emergence, growth and the future of Chinese firms in the world economy. Another forthcoming work in this area explores the impact of the contemporary culture of luxury brand consumption on emergent economies.
As a founding member of the Asia-Pacific Academy of Advertising, Hung’s long-term goal is to build and align the institute with its western counterparts. On her next research adventure, Hung says, “I am interested in pursuing some new book projects. One possibility is a book on celebrity endorsement and influential marketing. The other could be a co-authored effort on strategic communication in Asia-Pacific.”
