Advertising and branding
Our advertising research covers advertising agency management, creative processes, ethics and sustainability, gender stereotypes, health advertising, online marketing campaigns and mobile advertising.
Through our branding research, we explore online branding, brand attachment, luxury branding, consumer-based brand equity, brand performance measurement, place brands and human brands.
Our research has been published in international journals such as the Journal of Advertising, Annals of Tourism Research, European Journal of Marketing, and the Journal of Business Research. We also share insights from our research at conferences, workshops and keynote speeches.
We collaborate on our research with local, national and global businesses and organisations. Our ongoing research with a leading name in the quality of sound industry is exploring whether emotion or rationality is more impactful in advertising their high-end headphones.
All our researchers bring their industry experience from the advertising and branding professions to our research, including Dr Sarah Turnbull and Professor Yuksel Ekinci, who are recognised experts in the area of advertising and branding, respectively.
Sarah's book Marketing Communications: discovery, creation and conversations (2016), co-authored with Chris Fill, is recognised as “the authoritative text for professional courses such as those run by The Chartered Institute of Marketing and is supported by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising” (Pearsons, 2016).
Professor Yuksel Ekinci is a world methodological expert of SEM-PLS, and his Google Scholar profile shows that his work has been cited around 7000 times in the area of consumer behaviour in branding – while Mahsa Ghaffari and Sharon Wu have published extensively on power in advertising creativity and on the role of advertising stimuli on brand recall and recognition respectively.
Project highlights
- We're exploring how brand attachment can lead to compulsive buying and external talking, which can damage a brand's reputation and encourage excessive consumerism > Read more
- We're working on a research project funded by the United Arab Emirates Government to identify how businesses in emerging economies can improve the recruitment of advertising creatives > Read more
- Judith Fletcher-Brown's pioneering research into how the Westernisation of Indian women puts them at risk of developing breast cancer has received extensive coverage in the mainstream media, including The Independent newspaper > Read more
Recent publications
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Fletcher-Brown, J., Pereira, V. and Nyadzayo, M. W. Journal of Business Research
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Japutra, A., Simkin, L. and Ekinci, Y. European Journal of Marketing, 52(1/2)
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Howe-Walsh, L., Turnbull, S., & Budhwar, P. (2018). Journal of Business
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Journal of Advertising, 2019, 48:2, 242-249, DOI: 10.1080/00913367.2019.1598310, Mahsa Ghaffari, Chris Hackley & Zoe Lee
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Size does matter: Effects of in-game advertising stimuli on brand recall and brand recognition:
Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 86, 2018, pages 311-318 Isabella Chaney, Sameer Hosany, Meng-Shan Sharon Wu, Cheng-Hao Steve Chen, Bang Nguyen
Discover our areas of expertise
Research groups
Our members

Dr Mahsa Ghaffari
- Job Title Senior Lecturer
- Email Address Mahsa.Ghaffari@port.ac.uk
- Department Marketing
- Faculty Faculty of Business and Law
- PhD Supervisor PhD Supervisor
Helen Mary Thompson-Whiteside
- Job Title Senior Lecturer in Marketing
- Department Marketing
- Faculty Faculty of Business and Law

Dr Meng Shan Wu
- Job Title Senior Lecturer in Marketing
- Email Address sharon.wu@port.ac.uk
- Department Marketing
- Faculty Faculty of Business and Law
Interested in a PhD in Marketing?
Browse our postgraduate research degrees – including PhDs and MPhils – at our Marketing postgraduate research degrees page.