We are a dynamic team of marketing scholars with over 50 years of cumulative experience, producing culturally-informed insights into consumer behaviour and culture.
Professor Diane M. Martin
Diane focuses on new market development, sustainability/corporate social responsibility, gender and the ways these topics impact consumer experiences and inform management decisions through industry engagement. Her work has been published in top journals in marketing including the Journal of Consumer Research, Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Marketing and Public Policy and other marketing and communication journals. She is the author of the book, Sustainable Marketing. She has won numerous university and international awards for the quality and impact of her research. Diane researches consumer innovations and understanding how consumers create value through the development of new markets to solve problems and has received over $6.8 million in research funding. Diane has worked with multiple organisations in industry and government including Nissan, Jeep, Cadillac, Harley-Davidson & Yamaha, Valio, and BONUS Baltic Sea Research and Development.
Professor Francis Farrelly
Francis focuses on understanding culture, in its various forms, how it influences consumers and consumption, and how this can inform marketing decision making. Francis has published his work in journals such as the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Consumer Research, Annals of Tourism Research, and the Harvard Business Review. He has also carried out research and written whitepapers as part of the Prime Ministers taskforce on Innovation. Francis has worked with organisations such as the Australian Football League and various professional sports clubs, and firms including the NBL, the TAC, Rip Curl, Telstra, Westpac, Jaguar Land Rover and Mercedes Benz. Recently Francis won an Australian Marketing Institute National Award for Excellence for his work in Industry. Francis has received over $1 million in research and teaching grants including ARC Linkage and Discovery Grants. Francis has received university, national and international awards for his research, teaching, and work in industry.
Associate Professor Bernardo Figueiredo
Bernardo researches markets and social change, explaining behaviours in terms of the environments in which they are embedded. In his perspective, impactful solutions are created by understanding both a) the lived experiences and practices of those whose behaviour we want to explain and manage, and b) and the contexts, networks, systems, or environments in which these people are situated. In addition to working with consumer culture-based insights his research interests cover value co-creation, consumers relationship with technology, collaborative networks, community building, placemaking, migration, mobility, and cosmopolitanism. Bernardo has published his work in leading journals such as the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Business Research, Marketing Theory, as well as important niche journals such as Consumer Markets & Culture and the journal of the Academy of Management Learning and Education. He has won university and international awards for his research.
Dr. Lauren Gurrieri
Lauren researches gender, consumption and the marketplace, with a focus on gendered inequalities in consumer and digital cultures. Her scholarship has been published in a range of leading journals, including Gender, Work & Organization, Journal of Business Research and Consumption, Markets & Culture. She has provided expert advice and invited presentations on gender equality to local and State Government, the Australian Association of National Advertisers and various women’s organisations. Lauren is a Board Member of the Consumer Culture Theory Consortium, an Advisory Board Member for GENMAC, the Gender and Equality theme co-leader for Centre for People, Organisation and Work and is an Associate Editor at the Journal of Marketing Management. Lauren is the recipient of various research and teaching awards and is a regular expert contributor to the media. Lauren is currently a Chief Investigator on an ARC Discovery Project examining mobile phone sports betting applications.
Dr. Torgeir Aleti
Torgeir focuses on how people learn and negotiate consumer roles in close relationships and how this relates to adaptability to marketplace changes and market offerings. He is a co-founder of Shaping Connections; a research program that investigates seniors and technology. Torgeir works with senior organisations such as the University of the Third Age (U3A) Network Victoria and Life Activities Clubs of Victoria. Recently, Torgeir received over $120,000 grant from Australia’s peak communications consumer organisation, ACCAN (The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network), to investigate senior’s perceived level of risk involved with usage of information and communications technology (ICT).
Dr. Marian Makkar
Marian focuses on disruptive business innovations, new market developments and the ways in which markets can shape consumers to inform marketers’ decision making. She is interested in understanding how consumers create value through the development of new product innovations when major brands have fallen behind. She also investigates companies that use a sharing economy business model to disrupt their respective industries, such as Airbnb disrupting hotel/real estate sectors, or Uber disrupting the taxi market. Marian is a committee member of the College of Business & Law Human Ethics Advisory Network (BLCHEAN), contributing to RMIT’s commitment to ethical and responsible conduct of human research. She is also a recipient of research grants and awards such as The Royal Society Te Apārangi Early Career Research Excellence. Her research has been published in leading journals including the European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research and Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services.
Dr. Kieran Tierney
Dr. Kieran D Tierney is the Program Manager for the Postgraduate Marketing Programs and Senior Lecturer in Marketing at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. His research interests are at the intersection of Consumer Engagement, Services Branding and Brand Strategy with a particular focus on the co-creation of service brand meaning. He is a founding member of the eSports Research Network and member of the Market-Shaping special interest group of the Australia New Zealand Marketing Academy. His research has won international awards and been published in the Journal of Service Theory and Practice, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, and International Journal on Media Management.
Dr. Amanda Spry
Amanda investigates the critical role that brands play for consumers, companies, markets, and society. Across her research projects, Amanda studies the capacity and versatility of brands to drive a company’s bottom line, to engage in sociopolitical activism, and to contribute to societal transformation. She has presented her research at prestigious institutions such as the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, as well as conferences for the American Marketing Association and the European Marketing Academy, amongst others. Amanda serves as the Workplace Integrated Learning Coordinator for the School of Economics, Finance, and Marketing and is the recipient of various teaching awards. She has contributed to The Conversation editorial outlet and provided comment in Australian media outlets such as AdNews, B&T, and The Financial Times as a branding expert. Amanda has published in leading journals such as the European Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing.
Associate Professor Joona Keränen
Joona´s research is focused on how different organizations can understand, quantify, and communicate the value that they (co-)create with their customers and other stakeholders in various contexts, including business-to-business (B2B) markets, circular economy, and healthcare. Joona has extensive experience in developing and leading several large-scale and industry-engaged research projects in Europe, and he has received over $5.5 million in research funding. His work has been published in leading B2B journals, including Industrial Marketing Management, International Journal of Production and Operations Management, and Journal of Business Research, and he has won several awards for the quality and impact of his research. Joona is currently a Chief Investigator in a research project examining Creating Shared Value in Social Procurement.
Dr. Argho Bandyopadhyay
Dr. Argho Bandyopadhyay is currently a lecturer in RMIT Graduate School of Business and Law, RMIT University, Melbourne. He has earned his PhD in Branding and Marketing from Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia, focusing on the consumer brand relationships and brand equity. His principal research interests lies in the areas of branding, technology, self-identity, consumer brand emotions and how it influences consumer brand relationships. Mostly, he uses wine as a context to understand the phenomenon. As a researcher, he has published his research works in European Journal of Marketing, Australasian Marketing Journal, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Behaviour, Journal of Wine Research, and Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, and has also presented at well-known Marketing Conferences such as the AMA and ANZMAC.
Dr. Jessica Helmi
Jessica has extensively researched branding and innovation, specifically their application to the concept of place. Her focus has been on examining the crucial role of stakeholder engagement in place brand management and marketing practices. She collaborated closely with the Australian Trade Commission to evaluate Australia's nation brand, known as Australia Unlimited (2012-2018). Her qualitative research work is published in top-quality marketing journals such as the European Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Strategic Marketing. In addition, she currently leads several industry-engaged research projects that revolve around themes such as place brand experience, neuromarketing and place branding, place security branding, the role of innovative gamification strategies in place branding, and place-based digital entrepreneurial and marketing strategies.
CCIG Doctoral students and research topics
- Handini Audita, "Fostering fashion innovation through cultural hybridity: The case of Indonesian Kebaya"
- Fiona Finn, "A critical feminist interrogation of the politics of femvertising 'empowerment and post-feminist based' advertising"
- Donna Gallagar, “Intended self: Exploring the relationship between experience consumption goals and the extended self”
- Sema Gunes "The Consumption Journeys of New Parents"
- Thi Thao Nguyen Luu, “Market Emergence of Hybrid Business Models: A Study of Social Enterprises in Vietnam”
- Saara Matilainen, “Exploring the secondary consumer socialisation processes of older Australians: How social interactions shape the adoption and use of information communication technology”
- Laura McVey, "Dark Dynamics: exploring harm in the online amateur pornography market"
- Sadaf Sagheer, "Beyond Pink Trucks: Undoing Gender Socialisation through marketing of children’s toys"
- Federico Triolo, “Coffee: A Metamorphic and Iconic Product infused with Cultural Meanings”
- Stephanie Yesmukanova, “Cultural analysis of the evolution of status: Prestige and sustainability in luxury electric car market”
