Christian Hughes

Christian Hughes is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Mendoza College of Business. Dr. Hughes’s research interests are in digital and social media, with a focus on influencer marketing and content analysis. She collaborates with influencer marketing companies, and has an interest in research questions that can help managers. Her research approach combines empirical analysis of secondary datasets with field and lab experiments. For instance, she published an article in the Journal of Marketing that examines sponsored blogging’s effectiveness across platforms. She is the recipient of the 2020 Don Lehmann Award, which recognizes the Best Dissertation-based Article published in the Journal of Marketing or Journal of Marketing Research.

She teaches Social Media Marketing at the undergraduate and graduate level and won the 2021 James Dincolo Outstanding Undergraduate Professor Award. Prior to entering academia, she worked as a Marketing Research Analyst for Management Science Associates, Inc. and consulted for companies such as Avon, Danone, Georgia-Pacific, and R.J. Reynolds. She earned her B.S. and M.A. in statistics and her Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Pittsburgh.

RESEARCH AREA

Substantive: Influencer Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Content Analysis

Methodological: Empirical modeling, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Multimethod

Awards

• Selected for University of Notre Dame’s Provost’s Initiative Faculty Success Program, 2021
• Winner of the 2021 James Dincolo Outstanding Undergraduate Professor Award
• Winner of the 2020 AMA Marketing Research Sig Don Lehmann Award
• Strategy Consortium, UT Austin – nominated participant, 2021 (virtual)
• AMA-Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium Fellow, University of Leeds, 2018
• Women in Marketing Leadership Conference (DCMA) – invited participant, 2018
• Best Paper in Theme at Winter AMA, 2018
• Roger S. Ahlbrandt Sr. Fellowship, 2015-2019

Grants

• P&G Higher Education Grant, Procter and Gamble, $16,000
• AMA EBSCO Grant, 2017
• Small Dean’s Research Grant Recipient, University of Pittsburgh, 2017

JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS

• Hughes, Christian, Vanitha Swaminathan, and Gillian Brooks, “Driving Brand Engagement Through Online Social Influencers: An Empirical Investigation of Sponsored Blogging Campaigns,” Journal of Marketing, 83 (5), 78-96.

PAPERS UNDER REVIEW

• Hughes, Christian, Lauren Grewal, and Jeffrey Inman “Normative Effects in Sequential Group Decisions: The Role of the First Follower.” Under review at the Journal of Consumer Research.

WORKING PAPERS

• Kanuri, Vamsi, Christian Hughes, and Brady Hodges, “Driving Engagement of Firm-Generated Social Images: The Role of Visual Features and Circadian Rhythms.” Preparing for submission to ISR.

WORKS IN PROGRESS

• Hughes, Christian and Jillian Hmurovic, “Linguistic Consistency of Human-Brands on Twitter: Evidence from the 2020 U.S. Democratic Primary.”

• Soni, Aman, Christian Hughes, and Vanitha Swaminathan, “Optimizing Social Influencer Selection by Brands.”

• Hughes, Christian, Carolina Salge, Corinna Rutschi, and Nicholas Berente, “Influencer Bots: Examining the Role of CGI Influencers in Sponsored Posts.”

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

• Swaminathan, Vanitha, Christian Hughes, and Gillian Brooks (2016), “Bloggers as Social Influencers: Optimizing Social Media Engagement via Blog Campaigns,” Marketing Science Institute, Report #16-125.