Professor Kineta Hung

About

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.

Professor Hung 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 influencer marketing. Her work on celebrity/influencer marketing applies a relational-bonding approach to explore self-branding strategy, 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, by synthesising insights from works on celebrity fandom, media entertainment and authenticity research.

One study rated Professor Hung as one of the world’s 25 most prolific researchers in top-ranking advertising journals. Professor 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. Professor 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. Professor Hung’s current interest in branding in China was piqued because of a dearth of scholarship into the Chinese context. Professor 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 Professor 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 work in this area explores the impact of the contemporary culture of luxury brand consumption on emergent economies.

As a founding member and president of the Asia-Pacific Academy of Advertising, Professor Hung’s long-term goal is to build and align the institute with its western counterparts. On her next research adventure, Professor Hung says, “I am interested in pursuing some new book projects. One possibility is a book on celebrity endorsement and influencer marketing. The other could be a co-authored effort on strategic communication in the Asia-Pacific region.

Achievements

Research Outputs