The Thirteenth Session of Academic Forum of Excellence 2023 of the Business School for the 20th Anniversary Celebration of the Establishment of the Business School and the MBA Education Center Successfully Organized

On the morning of June 21, 2023, the Business School held the Thirteenth Session of Academic Forum of Excellence 2023 of the lecture series of the Business School for the 20th Anniversary Celebration of the Establishment of the Business School and the MBA Education Center in Conference Room 615 of the Main Teaching Building of the Xueyuan South Road Campus of Central University of Finance and Economics. This lecture featured Professor Chu Junhong from the University of Hong Kong Business School as the sharing guest. Over twenty participants, including faculty members, doctoral students, master's students, and undergraduates from our School, attended the event.

The conference was hosted by Assistant Professor Ling Ruobi from the Marketing Department at the Business School. Before the lecture officially began, Professor Ling provided a detailed introduction to Professor Chu Junhong's credentials. Professor Chu Junhong is a professor at the University of Hong Kong Business School. She received her Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Chicago in 2006 and has previously worked at Peking University, the National University of Singapore, and the University of Hong Kong. Professor Chu's primary research interest lies in quantitative research in marketing. Her areas of expertise include platform and sharing economy, network economy, big data and marketing, and e-commerce. She has published over 20 papers in top international journals. In 2011, she was awarded the "Young Scholar Award" by the American Marketing Association (this award is the highest accolade in American marketing academia). She has also been honored with several other awards. She has conducted research in collaboration with various companies, such as Alibaba, Didi Chuxing, Lianjia, KingMed Diagnostics, Comfort Taxi, Topsky Medical Technology, kktijian, Lazada, SEA (Winter Sea), and Shengdacheng. She has also provided policy advisory services to the Prime Minister's Office of Singapore, Singapore Customs, Singapore Productivity Center, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Singapore Airlines, and Singapore Changi Airport.

The topic of Professor Chu's lecture was "Online Healthcare Platform Evolution: The Interplay of Bargaining and Network Effects." This research creates a new framework to examine the evolution of online healthcare platforms by combining the theories of network effects and bargaining. It investigates how these platforms balance the competing objectives of growth and profitability. The framework is utilized with data from a major Chinese online healthcare platform and offers insights into resource allocation through a series of simulations.

Following the presentation, the faculty and students participated in an interactive discussion on themes such as research design, statistical analysis, and academic publishing, thereby enhancing the academic communication.

The “Academic Forum of Excellence” is an academic exchange platform established by the Business School to fulfill its mission of "contributing new knowledge to management.” It focuses on cutting-edge theoretical issues and organizational development challenges in the discipline of business administration and Chinese enterprise management practices. By aggregating cutting-edge thoughts and innovative viewpoints from both domestic and international sources, it seeks to explore Chinese solutions for the social and economic development of China.