Jingyi Duan, PhD, assistant professor of marketing and interdisciplinary business, was named a 2018 recipient of the Bright Ideas Research Award for her article, “Posting Purchases on Social Media Increases Happiness: The Mediating Roles of Purchases’ Impact on Self and Interpersonal Relationships.” The annual award was established to recognize the research and contributions of faculty from business schools throughout the State of New Jersey and is sponsored by Seton Hall University’s Stillman School of Business.
“I was grateful to get the award and appreciated the support from my department and the School of Business,” said Dr. Duan.
The research in Dr. Duan’s study investigated how consumers’ purchase-posting behavior on social media influences their own happiness. The paper contributes to the research on social media by demonstrating that because of its remarkable characteristics, posting purchases on social media significantly increases consumers’ happiness. It fills the research gap of how word-of-mouth and conspicuous consumption influences the storyteller’s happiness. It is also the first research that suggests that user-generated content of purchases actually can be a new carrier of conspicuous consumption.
The article will be published in the seventeenth annual volume of the Publications of New Jersey’s Business Faculty. Dr. Duan’s research was identified as one of the top ten manuscripts from over 165 publications considered.