People

“A lot of faculty do similar styles of work and I wanted to combine causal inference and machine learning with some economics techniques and some other state-of-the-art techniques. This is why I felt the marketing program at HBS was a very good fit for me.”

Magie Cheng (she/her) worked for a social network company in their machine learning group and spent much of her time analyzing user behavior for a wide range of social networking applications. She became intrigued by technology diffusion and social interactions on platforms. To examine these behaviors in greater detail, she started to investigate the possibility of a Ph.D.

“My interests were quite broad when I applied, but centered around technological innovation and new product diffusion,” Magie explained. She was interested in exploring how technology changes consumer behavior and whether this trend can be predicted in the sharing economy. As a result, she applied to a wide range of programs, including the quantitative marketing track at HBS, as well as programs in organizational behavior, information systems, and sociology. “A lot of faculty do similar styles of work and I wanted to combine causal inference and machine learning with some economics techniques and some other state-of-the-art techniques. This is why I felt the marketing program at HBS was a very good fit for me.” In addition to being able to structure her coursework to build skills using a range of techniques, Magie also found faculty using these cutting-edge techniques in the marketing unit at HBS.

Since arriving at HBS, Magie has been immersed in the intellectual community here. “I think it’s a very supportive place,” she explained. “My advisors care about research a lot. The faculty will always set up a time to do a deep dive on research problems. They want to help you succeed.” She’s also formed close relationships with students in the marketing program as well as in other programs, through coursework and study groups. Her favorite space on the HBS campus is a special gathering area that’s only available to faculty and doctoral students, the Frist Faculty Commons. “It’s a very great place for doctoral students to meet with each other and meet with faculty.”

Research

Magie is working actively with her advisors on several interesting projects at the intersection of marketing, information systems, and technological innovation. One project, which is relevant to both the marketing and information systems, examines social media influencer reputation. In this project, Magie and her co-authors look at influencers on YouTube, examining how promoting products in videos will impact the influencer’s reputation. They estimate the causal effect of how much influencers exploiting their relationships will impact the reputation of the influencer and find that low-stakes influencers do not have their reputations damaged by posting these sponsored products or videos because they have a closer relationship with their fans and have built trust.

Another project with Elie Ofek and Tomomichi Amano examines the influencer market, leveraging machine learning techniques to how influencers increase engagement and whether overlapping audiences are more engaged.