Professor Dorothy Yen
Divisional Lead / Professor in Marketing

Research area(s)

Dorothy enjoys taking a problem-focused and user-centred approach to explore, understand and discuss various societal phenomena and matters. Her earlier research was very much focused on the B2B domain, where she investigated cross-cultural business relationships, with a particular focus on discussing how cultural-specific factors, such as the Chinese notion of guanxi, affect international business relationships and collaborations, especially in Anglo-Chinese B2B relationships. Her research findings help Western and Chinese firms reduce conflict, increase trust, and improve their relationship performance.

Her interest in understanding how culture affects human behaviour and interactions is not restricted to the B2B field but has also moved into the B2C field over the past decade. She explores acculturation amongst travelling consumers. These include sojourners, migrants, international students, as well as tourists. Dorothy studies their consumption of food and social media in relation to their cultural identities and their relationships with the host society.

Her willingness to support colleagues with various projects and collaborate across different disciplines means that her publications are wide-ranging, tapping into areas from marketing, management, green supply chain, and communications, to the more discipline-specific journals in food and health as well as tourism.  Over the years, she has developed a strong will to support responsible consumption and the value of equality, diversity and inclusion, with a particular focus on 1) creating an age-friendly society, 3) preventing migrants from becoming marginalised citizens, and 3) promoting Wales as a global tourist destination.

Research Interests

I'm interested in the following topics:

• Older adults as ageing consumers, healthy ageing practices and wellbeing
• Promoting Wales to international tourists as a global tourist destination
• Migrants as ethnic consumers, their identity, acculturation and their role in the host societies. 
• Educating children as agentic consumers to reduce food waste

Research group(s)

• Marketing and Corporate Brand Management Research Group (MCBM)

Project details

My recent research projects are listed below. If you are interested in knowing more about these, please email me for more information.

• Trust and Covid policy compliance (funded by ESRC) 
• COVID-19 and the reservoir of trust: public health, public opinion and policy outcomes
• Voices of the invisible migrant cleaners for COVID recovery: Heroes, threats or victims
• Covid’s impact on Taiwanese migrants living in the UK
• Chinese manufacturers' green customer cooperation
• The spill-over effect of food waste education, from children to adults, from school to home
• Ageing consumers' adoption of healthy ageing practices
• Tiger parenting? Parenting styles and characteristics
• Food waste reduction campaign, designed by children for children
• Sustainable food consumption, designed by children for children
• A comparative study of business relationships between UK suppliers and buyers from China and India