To further promote academic excellence, achieve the goal of cultivating outstanding talents, and establish a research and education atmosphere oriented towards excellence and common progress of academic teams and students, the ECNU Sci-Tech Business Consortium officially launched the Excellent Academic Teacher-Student Joint Funding Program (hereinafter referred to as the "Mentorship" program) on May 16, 2023. The main goal of the program is to guide students to establish a long-term development goal of pursuing excellence, enhance their competitiveness through scientific research, and help them complete master's and doctoral degrees at world-class universities. On June 14, 2023, the "Mentorship system" mentor-student meeting was successfully held. A total of six mentors and 14 students participated in the first batch , including 10 undergraduate students (including 2 international students) and 4 postgraduate students. A series of reports on the research progress of each project are now being launched to showcase the joint academic cultivation achievements of them and improve the quality of talent cultivation.
Zhang Mingyue
Zhang Mingyue is an assistant professor of marketing at Asia Europe Business School. She teaches the marketing courses in the BBA required curriculum （mainly teaching courses such as management research methods and global brand management. ）The research field focuses on user generated content (UGC) and artificial intelligence generated content (AIGC), as well as the impact of AI based visual information on user behavior decisions. She has published several papers in international journals such as Journal of Business Research, Journal of Advertising Research, and Appetite, and have led multiple national and provincial projects.
Yan Luyao
the student of Undergraduate Degree Program in Business Administration (China-France Innovative Experimental Class(2020), received the Outstanding Student Scholarship from East China Normal University and the Social Practice Award. The research areas of interest include social media marketing, virtual IP co-branding, video advertising, etc.
Yang Lurui
the student of Undergraduate Degree Program in Business Administration (China-France Innovative Experimental Class(2021), won the third prize of CMAU Market Research and Planning Competition Eastern Division, the third prize of NECCS National Undergraduate English Competition National Level, the scholarship for outstanding students of East China Normal University, loved folk dance, cheerleading, singing, etc., and had great interest in Chinese culture and anime culture. Research interests focus on anime marketing, Internet, etc.
Main research scope
The foundation of the "Mentorship system" program is the common research interests and academic goals of both teachers and students, and the process of two-way selection well reflects the overlap of interests and the consistency of goals. At the beginning of the project, both teachers and students had multiple communications and in-depth exchanges, covering research objectives, scope, and theme. This process is undoubtedly very interesting and challenging. The interests of students are often closely related to their own learning and life, but whether they can fit the research field that their mentors have been deeply cultivating for many years requires more consideration at multiple levels. At the same time, the original intention of the mentorship program is to cultivate outstanding talents and apply research results to solve national needs and social problems. After multiple rounds of communication and discussion, the project team ultimately determined the research scope to be the application research of generative AI in the field of visual information.
Important activities carried out
Firstly, the project team conducted in-depth discussions and reflections on the topic. The project team members held multiple offline and online meetings to discuss relevant topics in the research field, including generative AI, online video advertising, etc. They repeatedly delved into the hot and difficult topics in the relevant field, as well as their contributions to theory and practice. By gradually narrowing the research scope, they found the most suitable entry point.
Online discussions between mentors and students
Secondly, the project team conducted a more in-depth exploration of topics with research potential by reading a large amount of literature. For the content of video advertisements, the project team found multiple advertisements for cosmetics, milk tea, electronic products and other products on video platforms such as Tiktok, Xiaohongshu, YouTube, etc. After repeated comparative analysis of multiple videos, research questions and conjectures were raised; Regarding corporate social responsibility, the project team specifically studied virtual corporate social responsibility, Ant Forest, etc; In response to the phenomenon of collaboration, the project team explored cross domain collaboration among multiple brands such as HEYTEA and FILA; Regarding AI generation, the project team has explored the research value and issues of AI generated photos at present.
Finally, the project team analyzed the innovation and shortcomings of this study, and ultimately determined the project topic and research framework.
Review and display of relevant literature
