Professor Zhang uses machine learning to address marketing problems that have arisen within the nascent sharing economy. She conducts rigorous analyses of structured and unstructured data generated by new sharing economy platforms to address important issues emerging in the sharing economy. Using data on the home sharing company Airbnb, Professor Zhang and colleagues have investigated the economic impact of using verified images (photos taken with an Airbnb professional photographer) to advertise a property on the platform. Her findings were featured in the article “How Much Is an Image Worth? Airbnb Property Demand Estimation Leveraging Large Scale Image Analytics.” In a related paper “Can Lower-quality Images Lead to Greater Demand on AirBnB?” Professor Zhang and her co-authors built structural models using Airbnb data to explore factors that influenced hosts’ decisions on what photographs to post, and explored policies that Airbnb can employ to improve hosts’ adoption of higher-quality photos and thereby improve profitability for both the hosts and Airbnb.
Shunyuan Zhang
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Marketing
Shunyuan Zhang is an assistant professor in the Marketing unit at Harvard Business School. She teaches the first-year Marketing course in the MBA required curriculum.
Professor Zhang studies the sharing economy and the marketing problems that the dynamics of this new economy present. She deploys machine learning methods including deep learning to extract useful information from unstructured data. Combining this information with structured data, Professor Zhang conducts thorough analysis and policy simulations to examine important issues emerging in the sharing economy arena.
Professor Zhang earned a Ph.D. in Marketing/Business Technology from Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business. She has a B.S. in Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China.
- Journal Articles
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- Feng, Flora, Shunyuan Zhang, Xiao Liu, Kannan Srinivasan, and Cait Lamberton. "An AI Method to Score Celebrity Visual Potential from Human Faces." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) (forthcoming). (Pre-published online February 12, 2025.) View Details
- Zhang, Shunyuan, and Das Narayandas. "Engaging Customers with AI in Online Chats: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment." Management Science (forthcoming). View Details
- Zhang, Shunyuan, Elizabeth Friedman, Kannan Srinivasan, Ravi Dhar, and Xupin Zhang. "Serving with a Smile on Airbnb: Analyzing the Economic Returns and Behavioral Underpinnings of the Host’s Smile." Journal of Consumer Research 51, no. 6 (April 2025): 1073–1097. View Details
- Hwang, Serim, Shunyuan Zhang, Xiao Liu, and Kannan Srinivasan. "Should Your Brand Hire a Virtual Influencer?" Harvard Business Review 102, no. 3 (May–June 2024): 56–60. View Details
- Cheng, Mengjie, and Shunyuan Zhang. "Reputation Burning: Analyzing the Impact of Brand Sponsorship on Social Influencers." Management Science (forthcoming). (Pre-published online October 18, 2024.) View Details
- Zhang, Shunyuan, Kaiquan Xu, and Kannan Srinivasan. "Unmasking Behaviors During the Pandemic with Video Analytics." Marketing Science 42, no. 3 (May–June 2023): 440–450. View Details
- Zhang, Shunyuan, Dokyun Lee, Param Singh, and Tridas Mukhopadhyay. "Demand Interactions in Sharing Economies: Evidence from a Natural Experiment Involving Airbnb and Uber/Lyft." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 59, no. 2 (April 2022): 374–391. View Details
- Zhang, Shunyuan, Kannan Srinivasan, Param Singh, and Nitin Mehta. "AI Can Help Address Inequity—If Companies Earn Users' Trust." Harvard Business Review Digital Articles (September 17, 2021). View Details
- Zhang, Shunyuan, Dokyun Lee, Param Vir Singh, and Kannan Srinivasan. "What Makes a Good Image? Airbnb Demand Analytics Leveraging Interpretable Image Features." Management Science 68, no. 8 (August 2022): 5644–5666. View Details
- Ordenes, Francisco Villarroel, and Shunyuan Zhang. "From Words to Pixels: Text and Image Mining Methods for Service Research." Journal of Service Management 30, no. 5 (2019): 593–620. View Details
- Zhang, Shunyuan, Nitin Mehta, Param Singh, and Kannan Srinivasan. "Frontiers: Can an AI Algorithm Mitigate Racial Economic Inequality? An Analysis in the Context of Airbnb." Marketing Science 40, no. 5 (September–October 2021): 813–820. View Details
- Zhang, Shunyuan, Param Singh, and Anindya Ghose. "A Structural Analysis of the Role of Superstars in Crowdsourcing Contests." Information Systems Research 30, no. 1 (March 2019): 15–33. View Details
- Book Chapters
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- Zhang, Shunyuan, Flora Feng, and Kannan Srinivasan. "Marketing Through the Machine’s Eyes: Image Analytics and Interpretability." Chap. 8 in Artificial Intelligence in Marketing. 20, edited by Naresh K. Malhotra, K. Sudhir, and Olivier Toubia, 217–238. Review of Marketing Research. Emerald Publishing Limited, 2023. View Details
- Working Papers
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- Exner, Yannick, Jochen Hartmann, Oded Netzer, and Shunyuan Zhang. "AI in Disguise—How AI-generated Ads' Visual Cues Shape Consumer Perception and Performance." SSRN Working Paper Series, No. 5096969. View Details
- Feng, Flora, Charis Li, and Shunyuan Zhang. "Visual Uniqueness in Peer-to-Peer Marketplaces: Machine Learning Model Development, Validation, and Application." SSRN Working Paper Series, No. 4665286, February 2024. View Details
- Cases and Teaching Materials
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- Zhang, Shunyuan, Feng Zhu, and Nancy Hua Dai. "Cheerful Music." Harvard Business School Case 525-031, November 2024. (Revised April 2025.) View Details
- Zhang, Shunyuan, Kannan Srinivasan, and Malini Sen. "Ather Energy: The Future of Mobility." Harvard Business School Case 525-040, November 2024. View Details
- Zhang, Shunyuan, and Das Narayandas. "Loris." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 524-076, March 2024. View Details
- Zhang, Shunyuan, and Sunil Gupta. "UGG Steps into the Metaverse." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 524-075, February 2024. View Details
- Zhang, Shunyuan, Das Narayandas, Stacy Straaberg, and David Lane. "Loris." Harvard Business School Case 524-010, October 2023. (Revised February 2024.) View Details
- Zhang, Shunyuan, Fares Khrais, and Namrata Arora. "Kariyer.net: Recruiting AI." Harvard Business School Case 524-014, August 2023. View Details
- Zhang, Shunyuan, Sharon Joseph, Sunil Gupta, and Julia Kelley. "UGG Steps into the Metaverse." Harvard Business School Case 523-013, November 2022. (Revised June 2023.) View Details
- Zhang, Shunyuan, and Sunil Gupta. "Perfect Diary (完美日记)." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 523-082, January 2023. (Revised February 2024.) View Details
- Zhang, Shunyuan, and Sunil Gupta. "Perfect Diary (完美日记)." Harvard Business School Case 522-030, August 2021. (Revised February 2024.) View Details
- Research Summary
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- Awards & Honors
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Winner of the 2024 Donald R. Lehmann Award from the Marketing Research SIG of the American Marketing Association for “Demand Interactions in Sharing Economies: Evidence from a Natural Experiment Involving Airbnb and Uber/Lyft” (Journal of Marketing Research, 2022) with Dokyun Lee, Param Vir Singh, and Tridas Mukhopadhyay.Nominated for the 2022 John D. C. Little Award for “Frontiers: Can an AI Algorithm Mitigate Racial Economic Inequality? An Analysis in the Context of Airbnb” (Marketing Science, September–October 2021) with Nitin Mehta, Param Singh, and Kannan Srinivasan.Winner of the 2020 Emerald Literati Award for Highly Commended Papers for "From Words to Pixels: Text and Image Mining Methods for Service Research" (Journal of Service Management, 2019) with Francisco Villarroel Ordenes.Runner up for the 2019 Nunamaker-Chen Dissertation Award from INFORMS Information Systems Society (ISS) for “A Structural Analysis of Sharing Economy Leveraging Location and Image Analytics Using Deep Learning.”Winner of the 2019 William W. Cooper Doctoral Dissertation Award in Management or Management Science from Carnegie Mellon University.Nominated with Magie Cheng for the 2021 Workshop on Information Systems and Economics (WISE) Best Student Paper Award for “Reputation Burning: Analyzing the Impact of Brand Sponsorship on Social Influencers.”
- Additional Information
- Areas of Interest
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- analytics
- artificial intelligence
- digital economy
- machine learning
- marketing
- econometrics
- pricing
- e-commerce industry
- high technology
- retailing
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