Q&A with Dora Wang

Dora Wang, Assistant Professor, Marketing, joined Sprott in the summer of 2023. This fall, she sat down with us to talk about the ways social media, business-to-business marketing, and health consumption coalesce in her program of research.

What attracted you to a career in higher education?

I always had great teachers when I was a child, so for me, one of the attractions is that, as teachers, professors can have a huge impact on the lives of their students. I like the possibility of influencing my students in a positive way. Another attraction is the importance of research in this career: I find research liberating because it allows me to explore things that I find interesting.

What are your current research interests?

My research has centered on social media, with a special focus on business-to-business (B2B) marketing and health marketing. My work on social media marketing within the B2B domain looks at how social media can be well integrated into marketing strategies from an organizational capability perspective, and how linguistic elements like emojis or interpersonal cues can help firms better engage their audiences on social media.

In terms of health marketing, I started looking at dietary supplement consumption during my PhD. I wanted to figure out how we could help consumers make well-informed decisions about dietary supplements and how social media could influence that decision-making process. The focus on dietary supplement consumption, however, is just a starting point. In the future, I’m hoping to extend the scope of my research to include other kinds of health consumption like complementary and alternative medicines or Eastern alternative therapies.

I also want to branch into the sport/fitness arena. In the wake of COVID-19, a lot of online live-streaming fitness classes emerged, making it possible for people to exercise wherever they liked as long as they had their mobile device and an internet connection. That flexibility also made exercise available to demographic groups who didn’t have access to gyms—older people with limited mobility, for example, or people in neighbourhoods with few fitness facilities. Exploring the emergence of these fitness-related services will allow me to consider health promotion not only in relation to consumption, but also in relation to production or exertion in the form of physical activity and fitness.

Could you expand on what you have discovered through your work on health consumption?

A few years ago, I attended a nutritional conference here in Ottawa. It was a major conference for nutrition analysts, dieticians, and other health professionals. They all viewed me with suspicion because they felt that marketers manipulate consumers. While it’s true that marketers promote products to make profits, I see my research as benefitting consumers by clarifying why they might be drawn to certain products.

For example, my research shows that consumers use dietary supplements for many reasons. They might use them for psychological comfort, for social belonging (i.e., if their friends and family members use them), or for self-expression (i.e., to show that they are concerned about health and wellness). These different reasons help to explain one of my surprising findings: some dietary supplement consumers are committed users despite knowing that the supplements might not be effective!

The range of motivations for supplement consumption also highlights the need for marketers to serve as a bridge between consumers and health professionals. For example, if marketers can help committed users recognize why they are consuming dietary supplements, then the consumers will be able to make better-informed decisions about whether they should continue to invest in those products or find other ways of achieving their goals.

Which course are you most looking forward to teaching this year?

I’m teaching Introduction to Marketing, Personal Selling, and (next term) Market Strategy. I’m excited to teach all these courses. That said, if I had to choose one favourite, I would say Personal Selling because it overlaps with the research I’ve done in relation to B2B marketing and research and development. I’m really looking forward to interacting with my students and giving them the opportunity to practice how they could communicate with their customers and other stakeholders.

What do you like about teaching in-person classes?

I like being able to walk among my students, to look in their faces, and to connect with them on a personal level. For example, the breaks provide a great opportunity for me to respond to student questions or even to hear from students who weren’t able to share their thoughts during the official class time.