Alexander Edeling
I am Associate Professor of Marketing at KU Leuven, Belgium.
My research interests are the interface between marketing and finance research
as well as the digital economy.
Bio
I joined KU Leuven, one of the oldest (founded in 1425) European universities as an Associate Professor of Marketing in 2021. Before that, I was a postdoctoral researcher at Boston University (as a visiting researcher) and the University of Cologne, Germany, where I had obtained my doctoral degree in 2016. I am an alumnus of the University of Mannheim, Germany, and have worked for or cooperated with companies in automobile, telecommunication, social media, pharma, railway and rail infrastructure. I like tennis, running, skiing, reading, history and travelling.
Research
My research deals with two major research themes:
Since my dissertation, I have been working on the so-called "marketing finance interface". This research field deals with the relationships between marketing-related constructs such as advertising or customer satisfaction and metrics that incorporate the behavior of financial-market participants, including analysts, investors, and creditors. My work in this area has been published in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research and International Journal of Research in Marketing and was featured in Forbes or Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
My second research theme is digitization, with a particular focus on social media and the creator economy. For example, I am interested in how firms can successfully leverage social media influencers to achieve engaging and trustworthy brand messages on social media platforms such as Instagram. My work in this area has been published in the Journal of Marketing and the International Journal of Research in Marketing.
Whenever possible, I try to connect the two research themes by showing the impact of digitization on investors. I am glad to be part of an international network of co-authors from universities such as BI Oslo, Boston University, Goethe University Frankfurt, Stockholm School of Economics, UCLA, University of Cologne, and Tilburg University. My research approach is quantitative in nature, using a diverse set of econometric methods.
My research has been awarded with several winner and runner-up positions, such as the 2023 AMA/Marketing Science Institute/H. Paul Root Award (winner), the 2023 Best Paper Award by the Marketing Section of the VHB (German Academic Association of Business Research) (winner), the 2023 Sheth Foundation / Journal of Marketing Award (finalist), the Best Paper Award at the AMA Winter Conference 2023 (consumer behavior track), the Best Paper Award by the International Journal of Research in Marketing 2021 (finalist) and 2022 (winner), the 2018 Best Paper Award by the Marketing Section of the VHB (German Academic Association of Business Research) (winner), the 2017 Paul E. Green Award for the best paper in the Journal of Marketing Research (finalist), the 2017 EMAC / Sheth Doctoral Dissertation Award (finalist), and the 2016 Horizont Foundation Dissertation Award (winner).
Teaching
At KU Leuven, I teach "Global, B2B and Service Marketing" as well as "Brand Management" in the master program. I further teach "Self Marketing in a Digitized World" in the master program at the University of Cologne and "Marketing Strategy Performance: Theory, Models, and Empirical Applications" in the doctoral program of the German Academic Association of Business Research (VHB) and the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM).
My teaching has been awarded with the Best Teacher Recognition of the Faculty of Economics and Business of KU Leuven in 2022 and the Junior Teaching Award of the WiSo Faculty of the University of Cologonge in 2019.
Commitment to young researchers and other academic community services
Together with my former fellow doctoral student Dr. Tobias Hornig (today Head of Advanced Analytics in industry), I founded the science-transfer initiative eDOCation. eDOCation is the first online platform allowing young scholars to offer "science as a service" to companies. We believe that young researchers ("eDOCs") can contribute to the transfer of knowledge from universities to business practice through online and offline training and seminars. At the same time, they can increase the relevance of their research und improve their future prospects.
In addition, I currently act as the ombudsperson for young researchers of the Marketing Section of the Verband der Hochschullehrer für Betriebswirtschaft, which is the German Academic Association for Business Research. Furthermore, I acted as the co-head of the marketing department of KU Leuven from 2022 until 2024.
Regarding other academic community services, I act as an editorial review board member of the Journal of Marketing and was the co-host of the 8th edition of the Marketing Strategy Meets Wall Street Conference 2024 in Cologne, the flagship conference of the marketing-finance interface research field.
I love libraries. The Library of KU Leuven, Boston Public Library as well as Hasso Plattner Library at the University of Mannheim are my favorite ones.
