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Office
Isenberg N336
Email
Email
Website
CV

Kun Qian

Assistant Professor

Marketing
Kun Qian is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts Amherst. He earned his Ph.D. in Management Science with a focus on marketing from the

Kun Qian is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts Amherst. He earned his Ph.D. in Management Science with a focus on marketing from the University of Texas at Dallas. His research examines how digital platforms, content creators, consumers, and firms interact in online markets, with particular expertise in live streaming, social media, recommendation systems, digital advertising, and artificial intelligence. His current work studies how platform policies, pricing, and monetization tools shape creator behavior and consumer engagement. His work has been published in Management Science and Journal of Marketing Research. 

Education

BBA in Accounting, Harbin Institute of Technology, 2015
MS in Marketing, University of Arizona, 2016
PhD in Marketing, University of Texas at Dallas, 2022

Academic Appointments

Assistant Professor of Marketing, UMass Amherst, 2024-present
Assistant Professor of Marketing, Southern University of Science and Technology, 2022-24

Research Interests

Quantitative marketing
Creator economy
Digital platforms
Behavioral economics
Economics of AI

Teaching Interests

Undergraduate
  • Marketing Analytics
Masters
  • Applied Marketing Analytics

Awards

Fellow, ISMS Early Career Scholars Camp, 2025
Flex Grant Award, UMass University of Massachusetts-Amherst, 2024
Scholar with High Distinction, The University of Texas at Dallas, 2022
Doctoral Fellow, AMA-Sheth Consortium, 2021
Betty and Gifford Johnson Travel award, The University of Texas at Dallas, 2020
Fellow, INFORMS Marketing Science Doctoral Consortium, 2019
Professional LinksLinkedInGoogle ScholarSSRNORCID

Selected Publications

"When Fan Subscriptions Get Expensive: How Platform-initiated Price Changes Affect Creator Behavior and Viewer Spending" (coauthored with Ying Xie and Zonghao Li)

"Who is AI replacing in social spaces? The effect of AI companions on social media consumption" (coauthored with Lin Qiu, Yinliang (Ricky) Tan, and Paul Pavlou)

Sanjay Jain, Kun Qian (2021) Compensating Online Content Producers: A Theoretical Analysis. Management Science 67(11):7075-7090. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.3862

Kun Qian, Sanjay Jain (2024) Digital Content Creation: An Analysis of the Impact of Recommendation Systems. Management Science 70(12):8668-8684. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.03655

Kun Qian, Ying Xie (2026). The Power of Star Creators: Evidence from the Live Streaming Industry. Journal of Marketing Research, 63(1), 149-166. https://doi.org/10.1177/00222437251359163