Soonkwan Hong

Contact

shong2@mtu.edu
906-487-2285
Academic Office Building 113

Associate Professor of Marketing, College of Business
IPEC Associate Director

PhD in Marketing, University of Texas-Pan American

Biography

Soonkwan Hong is originally from Inchon, South Korea, and has lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and more recently in south Texas. Dr. Hong believes that “edutainment,” utilizing innovative technologies, is one of the most successful teaching methods. He has published in many academic journals, including the Journal of Marketing Management, Marketing Theory, the Journal of Business Research, and Qualitative Market Research. Dr. Hong is also a member of three academic communities to which he regularly presents his research: Consumer Culture Theory Consortium, American Marketing Association, and Association for Consumer Research. He enjoys almost all sports, especially tennis, golf, and snowboarding.

Research Focus

Dr. Soonkwan Hong’s research focuses on sociocultural and ideological aspects of consumption, which should better facilitate our understanding of a variety of consumption practices, consumers’ lived experiences, and stylization of their lives. More specifically, such research illuminates consumers’ non-dialectical identity works. A multitude of reality-engineering/truth-making is witnessed in the current market system. Thus, Dr. Hong will continue to theorize about the new perspective of the consumer-market dynamics, as polyvalent power relations, to which consumers as “critical” constituents of the system constantly make sociocultural contributions.

Teaching Interests

Consumer behavior
Global Marketing
Branding
Marketing ethics and Sustainability

Research Interests

The polysemic nature of consumer-market dynamics in association with (pop)culture, technology, and institutions as key drivers of varied manifestations of consumer identity.
Consumers as self-emancipating and self-contradicting agents in the market
Sustainable lifestyles.
Postcolonialism and globalization
Alternative food systems and cultures
Algorithmic consumer culture

Selected Publications

Hong, S. (2020). Algorithmic Consumer Culture. In Consumer Culture Theory Conference.
Hong, S., Hristova, S., & Slack, J. D. (accepted). Algorithmic Culture: How Big Data and AI are Transforming Human Experiences. Lexington Books.
Hong, S. (accepted). Fetishizing Algorithms and Rearticulating Consumption. In Algorithmic Culture: How Big Data and AI are Transforming Human Experiences. Lexington Books.
Hong, S., Slack, J. D., & Hristova, S. (accepted). Algorithmic Culture: How Non-human Actors are Transforming Human Experience. Lexington Books.
Hong, S. (accepted). Evading Governmentality in the Market through Designing. Markets, Globalization & Development Review.
Hong, Soonkwan (2019), “Orientalism, Resistance or Global Harmony? Entangled Strands in the film Isle of Dogs,” Markets, Globalization & Development Review, forthcoming.
Vicdan, Handan and Soonkwan Hong (2018), "Enrollment of Space into the Network of Sustainability,” Marketing Theory, 18 (2), 169-187.
Hong, Soonkwan with Wided Batat, Valerie Manna, Paula Peter, Ebru Ulusoy, Emre Ulusoy, and Handan Vicdan (2017), “Alternative Food Consumption (AFC): Idiocentric and Allocentric Factors of Influence Among Low Socio-Economic Status (SES) Consumers,” Journal of Marketing Management, 33 (7-8), 580-601.
Vicdan, Handan, Wided Batat, and Soonkwan Hong (2016), “Social class dynamics in AFC,” Marketing Theory, 16 (4), 568-576.
Hong, Soonkwan and Chang-Ho Kim (2016), "Consuming the Korean: Memetic Kitschization of Unorthodox Aesthetics in Gangnam Style,” Arts and the Market, 6 (2), 187-205.
Hong, Soonkwan and Handan Vicdan (2016), “Re-imagining the Utopian: Transformation of a Sustainable Lifestyle in Ecovillages,” Journal of Business Research, 69 (1), 120-136.
Hong, Soonkwan (2016), “Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool (2014),” Markets, Globalization & Development Review, 1 (2), Article 7.
Hong, Soonkwan and Michael S. Minor (2014), “The Latent Potential of Virtual Communities as Brand Missionaries: Implications from U.S. and Korean Bloggers,” International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing, (vol. 6, 1 #, pp. 4-27).
Hong, Soonkwan and Chang-Ho Kim (2013), “Surfing the Korean Wave: A Postcolonial Critique of Mythologized Middlebrow Consumer Culture in Asia,” Qualitative Market Research, 16 (1), 53-75.
Hong, Soonkwan (2012), “Cruising the Unadulterated Terrain of Consumption: Rural Snowmobilers’ Interpellation through Collective Simplicity,” Advances in Consumer Research, 40, 952-953.
Hong, Soonkwan and Chang-Ho Kim (2012), “Mythologized Glocalization of Popular Culture: A Postcolonial Perspective,” Advances in Consumer Research, 40, 972-973.
Hong, Soonkwan (2011), “Skating Dialectics and Flipping Genealogy,” in Research in Consumer Behavior Vol. 13, eds., Russell W. Belk, Albert Muñiz, Hope Jensen Schau, and Kent Grayson, San Diego, CA: Emerald, 163-184.
Hong, Soonkwan and Yong J. Wang ((2011), “Invested Loyalty: The Impact of Ubiquitous Technology on the Current Loyalty Paradigm and the Potential Revolution,” Journal of Strategic Marketing, 19 (2), 187-204.
Wang, Yong J., Soonkwan Hong, and Jie Wei (2011), “Incorporating Web Aesthetics into e-Tail Web Atmospherics Research: An Evaluation of Multiple Frameworks,” International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing, 4 (1), 80-99.
Wang, Yong J., Soonkwan Hong, and Hao Lou (2010), “Beautiful Beyond Useful? The Role of Web Aesthetics,” Journal of Computer Information Systems, 50 (Spring), 121-129.
Wang, Yong J. and Soonkwan Hong (2010), “Broadening the Model of Goal-directed Behavior: Incorporating the Cognitive Force into Consumer Research,” Review of Business Research, 10 (1), 142-150.
Hong, Soonkwan and Yong J. Wang (2009), “When Relationship Marketing Collides with Technology,” Journal of Relationship Marketing, 8 (3), 213-230.
Jung, Joo and Soonkwan Hong (2008), “Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB), TQM and Performance at the Maquiladora,” International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management. 25 (8), 793-808.
Jung, Joo, Xuemei Su, Miguel Baeza, Soonkwan Hong (2008), “The Effect of Organizational Culture Stemming from National Culture Towards Quality Management Deployment,” The TQM Magazine, 20 (6) 622-635.
Hong, Soonkwan, Yong-Jian Wang, and Gilberto De Los Santos (2008), “The Effective Product Placement: Finding Appropriate Methods and Contexts for the Higher Brand Salience,” Journal of Promotion Management, 14 (2), 103-120.
Oyedele, Adesegun, Soonkwan Hong, and Michael S. Minor (2007), “Contextual Factors in the Appearance of Consumer Robots: Exploratory Assessment of Perceived Anxiety toward Humanlike Consumer Robots,” CyberPsychology & Behavior, 10 (5), 624-632.
Oyedele, Adesegun, Soonkwan Hong, and Michael S. Minor (2007), “Individual Assessment of Humanlike Consumer Robots: An Extended TAM with Aesthetic Response and Tolerance,” International Journal of Technology Marketing, 2 (3), 243-262.