Rate My Professor Wanhsiu Tsai

Wanhsiu Sunny Tsai is Professor and Department Chair of Strategic Communication in the University of Miami School of Communication, where she has been teaching since 2006. She earned her Ph.D. in Advertising from the University of Texas at Austin. Previously serving as an associate professor, she advanced to her current full professorship and leadership role in the department. Her research investigates the influence of advertising and marketing communication as a powerful cultural institution in capitalistic societies. Key areas of focus include minority consumers’ responses to multicultural advertising, post-feminism and femvertising, glocalization of brand meanings, consumer acculturation, consumer ethnocentrism, social media engagement, and emerging topics such as chatbot and augmented reality advertising.

Tsai has published extensively in premier outlets including the Journal of Advertising, International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Interactive Advertising, Journal of Global Marketing, Consumption Markets and Culture, and Journal of International Consumer Marketing, along with book chapters and conference proceedings. Representative works include "Social CEOs: The effects of CEOs' communication styles and parasocial interaction on social networking sites" (2017, New Media & Society). Her co-authored papers have earned top paper awards from the American Academy of Advertising, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, National Communication Association, and International Public Relations Research Conference. In 2020, she was awarded the American Academy of Advertising Research Fellowship, one of five selected nationwide, providing a $2,500 grant for her cross-cultural study "Interpersonal Communication with Consumers via Humanized Chatbots: Perspectives from China and the U.S.A.," co-authored with Ching-Hua Chuan and Yu Liu. Her scholarship demonstrates substantial impact, with over 7,400 citations on Google Scholar. Tsai teaches courses such as Principles of Advertising, Research Methods for Advertising, Advertising and Societies, International and Multicultural Advertising, and Qualitative Research Methods. As department chair, she oversees programs including the newly launched M.A. in Advertising emphasizing strategy, global insight, data analytics, and artificial intelligence.