The College is assuming a leadership role in research around China social media marketing through the Centre for Social Media Marketing and Business Intelligence (CSMR). The Centre was established in 2012 to enhance CB's research strength in social media marketing, e-commerce, and business intelligence. It is under the Directorships of Professor Choon-ling Sia, Professor in the Department of Information Systems, Professor Kelvin Yau, Associate Dean of the College of Business, Professor Yer-van Hui, Associate Dean of Chow Yei Ching School of Graduate Studies, and Dr Jeff Wang of the Department of Marketing.
"We are looking to promote interdisciplinary research which has both industrial and societal impact," says Professor Sia.
CSMR provides a supporting platform for conducting high impact interdisciplinary research work with a focus on social media and business intelligence. The Centre funds members of the College of Business, and their collaborators, in projects with a clear industry focus, up to a total of HK$1 million per annum. Members have worked closely with companies such as Alibaba/Taobao University, HSBC, Cigna Worldwide Life Insurance Co. Ltd., Ppdai.com, Jiangsu Deesha Princess Cultural and Creative Industry Co. Ltd., and ZhengHeDaYuan Internet Technology Co. Ltd. (Doumijie.com).
Early fruits of this collaboration are research articles and studies and a CSMR funded project, Co-opetition between B2C and C2C e-Commerce models: The case of Tmall and Taobao, with research paper titled An Empirical Study of Alibaba Retailers' Promotional Strategies on Double 11 Day, with Principle Investigator Dr Hailiang Chen (IS), along with Dr Alex Wang Chong (IS), and Dr Michelle Zeng Xiaohua (Marketing).
The same team took part in the AliResearch Innovation Competition, in which they won the 1st Runner-Up Award. In addition, they have had a paper accepted at the 2013 Chinese Conference of Complex Networks.
Another team of CB researchers have produced Taobao: Platform-Based Online Services Repertoire, Reputation, and Performance of E-Marketplace Sellers (Principle Investigator: Dr Yulin Fang).
A paper was also published in the proceedings of a regional Information Systems conference: Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems.
For more on CSMR: https://www.cb.cityu.edu.hk/research/csmr/about
