Rate My Professor Sarah Xiao

Prior to her academic career at Durham University since 2006, Sarah Xiao had a professional background in marketing, business development, entrepreneurship, and as Managing Director in the IT sector. She is also Programme Director for the Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) at Fudan University in China. Her research interests include behavioural change, consumer analytics (big data, AI, machine learning), consumer behaviour analysis, illicit consumption and consumer misbehaviour, neuroscience, marketing and consumer choice, mobile commerce, and social marketing especially within the context of health, digital marketing, and consumer data analytics. Key publications comprise 'Impulse buying: a meta-analytic review' (Iyer, G., Blut, M., Xiao, S., & Grewal, D., 2020, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science); 'When online reviews meet virtual reality: Effects on consumer hotel booking' (Zeng, G., Cao, X., Lin, Z., & Xiao, S., 2020, Annals of Tourism Research); 'Using social media big data for tourist demand forecasting: A new machine learning analytical approach' (Li, Y., Lin, Z., & Xiao, S., 2022, Journal of Digital Economy); 'Bilinear pooling in video-QA: empirical challenges and motivational drift from neurological parallels' (Winterbottom, T., Xiao, S., McLean, A., & Al Moubayed, N., 2022, PeerJ Computer Science); and 'From impression to expression: How warmth and competence in relaxing and challenging activities shape pleasure and eWOM' (Su, L., Wang, X., Lin, Z., & Xiao, S., 2025, Psychology & Marketing).