On the afternoon of Tuesday, June 17, 2025, CUFE Business School successfully held the "Experience Exchange Meeting on Teaching and Academic Research of 'International Marketing'" and the 16th Session of 2025 Excellent Academic Forum of CUFE Business School in Conference Room 615 of the Main Teaching Building at the Xueyuan South Road Campus. Associate Professor Deng Qi was invited as the keynote speaker for this lecture. Teachers and students of CUFE Business School, as well as scholars from institutions including the Institute of Industrial Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Beijing Open University, participated in the event.
Before the meeting, Professor Lin Song, Dean of CUFE Business School and Director of the MBA Education Center, met with Associate Professor Deng Qi (an alumni of CUFE) in his office. The two sides exchanged views on talent cultivation, discipline construction, scientific research, and international cooperation, and expressed the expectation that Associate Professor Deng Qi would play a more active role in the development of the school.
At the beginning of the meeting, Professor Liu Xiaoyuan, Vice Dean of CUFE Business School, delivered a speech. He congratulated the holding of the Experience Exchange Meeting on Teaching and Academic Research of "International Marketing", introduced the progress of discipline construction of CUFE Business School and the purpose of the Excellent Academic Forum to the participants, welcomed alumni Associate Professor Deng Qi back to his alma mater for academic exchanges, and hoped that Alumni Deng Qi would continue to support the development of the school as always.
The meeting was hosted by Professor Cui Xinjian from the Marketing Department of CUFE Business School. Deng Qi is an Associate Professor of Business Analytics at the Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, Canada, and previously served as an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the Rowe School of Business, Dalhousie University. He obtained a Bachelor of Management degree from China Agricultural University, a Master of Business Administration degree from CUFE, and a Doctor of Management degree from Carleton University. His research interests include social media analysis, digital marketing, computer-mediated communication, and human-AI interactive collaboration. His research results have been published in journals such as Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Interactive Marketing, British Journal of Educational Technology, and Pacific Asia Journal of the Association for Information Systems.
The theme of Associate Professor Deng Qi's lecture was "Emoji are not all Created Equal: The Effects of Emoji Variations on Brand Attitudes, Product Quality Expectations and Trial Intentions". The research focuses on the emerging field of the subtle impact of emojis in brand communication, with an emphasis on exploring two main functions of emojis—"text-enhancing emojis" and "text-substituting emojis"—and their subsequent effects. Through three series of experimental studies, the research reveals how emojis with different functions interact differentially with information characteristics, and then affect brand-level indicators such as brand attitude, product quality expectation, and consumer trial intention by influencing the fluency of information processing. The study found that when the fit between emojis and text is low, or when the complexity of the information text is high, substituting emojis trigger more negative brand evaluations than enhancing emojis, and this effect is mediated by information processing fluency. These findings deepen the understanding of the mechanism of emojis in brand communication and provide practical guidance for digital marketers on how to effectively use emojis.
After the lecture, participants conducted lively discussions on topics such as research topic selection and research interests, experimental design, and research subjects around the theme shared by Associate Professor Deng Qi, further deepening the exchange between academia and practice.
The "Excellent Academic Forum" is an academic exchange platform established by CUFE Business School to fulfill its mission of "contributing new management knowledge". It aims to focus on cutting-edge theoretical issues in the field of business administration and organizational development dilemmas in Chinese enterprise management practice, gather cutting-edge ideas and innovative perspectives at home and abroad, and explore Chinese solutions for China's social and economic development.
