Colleagues in the Marketing Group at Newcastle University Business School are undertaking research covering a broad range of themes, including:

• consumer behaviour
• digital marketing
• marketing of health and sustainability
• services marketing

Their recent findings and extensive knowledge are showcased below.

Publications

Congratulations to Professor Natalia Yannopoulou, Professor of Marketing, who co-edited a new textbook titled ‘Marketing Ethics and Consumer Society: practicing inclusive, responsible and sustainable marketing', offered by Routledge.   The book explores marketing ethics and the impact of marketing on consumer’s lives. It has a critical approach to marketing ethics covering the wider social, cultural, and political context of marketing activities.

Professor Stuart Barnes, Professor of Marketing, has achieved several publications. He recently published the paper ‘Understanding colour interaction effects in accommodation listing images’ in Journal of Travel Research. The paper suggests that accommodation providers should take a more analytical approach to creating and selecting accommodation, listing images as achromatic colours were proven to have the most positive effect on consumers.

Professor Barnes also published a paper alongside a co-author titled ‘“I like the sound of that”: Understanding the effectiveness of audio in ads’. The purpose of the research was to explore how audio features in advertisements impact viewers’ behaviour, an element of marketing which remains unexplored. The research demonstrated the importance of voice and music in signalling successful brand features.

Dr Weizheng Zhang, Lecturer in Marketing, and co-authors have explored the plus-size traveller market and the digital space via social media. By analysing the videos created by TikTok content creators and the interactive features, it emphasised how digital platforms are reshaping perceptions of who gets to be an empowered tourist, and how this shift is creating a more inclusive and body-positive narrative. Their paper ‘Plus size people can and will travel too: body positivity in travel and leisure’ was published in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism earlier in the year.

Dr Qionglei Yu, Reader in Marketing, and co-authors on their publication of the paper: ‘Future organizational identification: Visionary leadership gives me foresight to identify with my organization in the future’ in the Journal of Organizational Behaviour.

Awards

Well done to Dr Josephine Go Jefferies, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, whose paper has won a 2025 AMA Award for Responsible Research in Marketing. This is for the paper ‘Consumers on the Job: Contextualization Crafting in Expert Services’ which Dr Jeffries wrote alongside her co-authors.

During the AMA Summer Academic Conference in Chicago this August, Dr Jeffries and her co-authors will be presented with the award, host an interactive session and plan for the use of the award to generate further impact to progress the RRBM principles and agenda for Responsible Marketing.

PhD spotlight

Xinyi Wang, a Marketing PhD student, has been fostering sustainable behavioural change as part of the Hort2thefuture project.

Xinyi Wang began her PhD in the Marketing Subject Group at the start of 2025, supervised by Dr Cezara Nicoara (Lecturer in Marketing), Professor Matthew Gorton (Professor in Marketing), Dr Luca Panzone and Dr Barbara Tocco.

Xinyi’s PhD considers how to foster more sustainable practices amongst hobby gardeners. It is linked to the Hort2thefuture Horizon Europe research and innovation project, for which Newcastle University is leading the behavioural change work package. As part of the PhD, Xinyi is working with an app for gardeners called fryd. She developed a novel Large Language Model (LLM) and chatbot user interface to better understand the motivations, understandings, and practices of gardeners, analysing over 60,000 anonymised posts and comments from the community forums of the fryd app.

Xinyi developed the model with guidance from Arijit De and Atanu Dey, and her supervisors at Newcastle University. The model helps understand gardeners’ motivations, soil literacy, and practices. It will be used to help design more effective interventions to promote sustainable gardening practices and can be also used by digital marketers to understand what content achieves the highest user engagement.

Conferences and events

Dr Josephine Go Jefferies, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, was invited to deliver a keynote speech at the ICEH Conference hosted by the International Hellenic University in October because of her 'pioneering research' relevant to the conference theme of reimagining business and health.

Dr Jeffries has also been invited to present her research at Queen’s Business School in Belfast later in June.

Dr Qionglei Yu was the Chair and organiser of the one-day forum ‘Exploring Loneliness and Social Isolation: Young Adults’ on 13 June at Newcastle University Business School. This forum brought together young people, researchers, mental health professionals, charitable organisations, and digital innovators to explore the nuanced relationship between technology and loneliness.

Collaboration with industry

Fiona Thompson, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, was recently runner- up in the Engagement and Place Awards 2025 in the Engaging for Economic Benefit category.

Fiona is also Module Leader of two modules (MKT2010 and MKT3097) which uses live clients to provide applied learning experiences for our undergraduate Marketing students. The presentations this year involved 15 different live clients including Fentimans, Northumberland Community Bank and Natural History Society of Northumbria.

Fiona has successfully worked with 109 live clients to date and already has another 11 signed up for September 2025 for MKT3097 - Marketing Consultancy Project.

Another example of marketing research being impactful externally is from the work of Dr Josephine Go Jefferies who has received positive feedback on the preliminary findings of her global neurodiversity at work study. She is commissioning an infographic to increase the accessibility of the research across borders and continues to engage with research collaborators and their networks to disseminate several outputs at two or more United Nations organisations. Further plans include co-creating research impact with UN Staff Counsellors through a pilot intervention and evaluation to precede potential commercialisation plans.

You can also learn more about our colleague achievements on our social channels or through our regular updates on the news section of our website.