Marketing and Consumption Research

About the research group

We are an ambitious, dynamic and supportive community of marketing and consumption research scholars united by our commitment to excellence and diversity. Our strength lies in our multifaceted approaches, embracing various research areas, methodologies, and analytical perspectives to address today's most pressing marketing challenges. Our mission is to promote long-term business success while creating positive social and environmental sustainability through innovative cutting edge marketing research that benefits consumers, businesses, and society at large.

The research group focuses particularly on the following themes:

Sustainable Business Models and Ecosystems
Responsible Consumer Marketing
Transformative Consumption Culture and Society
Data-Driven Personas for Sustainable Growth
Meaningful Marketing Education

a boat figure with the current research phenomena on the mast and the research programmes of the research team on the bottom

Latest updates

Hanna Leipämaa-Leskinen Vaasan yliopisto

News 23.06.2025

Deceptive practices and online manipulation under scrutiny – Research Council of Finland awards nearly €590,000 to the University of Vaasa’s MisLead project

Associate Professor Henna Syrjälä awarded the University of Vaasa Science Communication Award

25.02.2025

Good and bad vegetarian food

Show more news

Research projects

Project	Duration	Actors
Co-development of healthier reformulated successful food products in South-Ostrobothnia (orig. Terveellisemmäksi reformuloitujen menestysruokatuotteiden yhteiskehittäminen Etelä-Pohjanmaalla)	04/2020 - 03/2022	Marketing and Consumption Research, Marketing and Communication
FLEXIMAR, Novel marketplace for energy flexibility	04/2019 - 12/2020	Smart electric systems, VEBIC, Marketing and Consumption Research
SolarX – Maximizing PV integration capacity in energy and power systems	01/2019 - 04/2022	Smart electric systems, VEBIC, Marketing and Consumption Research, Technology and Innovations

Publications

Publication year	Publication	Authors
2025	Leadership and Communication	Tillotson, Jack; Toyoki, Sammy
2025	Leadership and Innovation	Appiah, Gloria; Tillotson, Jack
2025	Demographics do not matter?: Exploring the impact of gender and ethnicity on users’ identification with AI-generated personas	Kaate, Ilkka; Salminen, Joni; Jung, Soon-Gyo; Santos, João; Aldous, Kholoud; Häyhänen, Essi; Azem, Jinan; Jansen, Bernard J.
2025	Food consumption motivations override and moderate the effect of nutrition label on responses to (un)healthy products	Kantola, Maija; Junkkari, Terhi; Hopia, Anu; Luomala, Harri
2025	Guilt and innocence – Emotional discourses in online discussions on climate change and housing	Salmela, Eveliina; Koskela, Merja; Syrjälä, Henna; Kääntä, Liisa
2025	Who should set the Standards? Analysing Censored Arabic Content on Facebook during the Palestine-Israel Conflict	Magdy, Walid; Mubarak, Hamdy; Salminen, Joni
2025	"When AI Writes Personas": Analyzing Lexical Diversity in LLM-Generated Persona Descriptions	Sethi, Sankalp; Salminen, Joni; Amin, Danial; Jansen, Bernard J.
2025	What is User Engagement?: A Systematic Review of 241 Research Articles in Human-Computer Interaction and Beyond	Jansen, Bernard J.; Guan, Kathleen W.; Salminen, Joni; Aldous, Kholoud Khalil; Jung, Soon-Gyo
2025	Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence in Progressive Education: Unravelling the Benefits and Challenges in Qatar’s HEIs	Jansen, Bernard J.; Jung, Soon-gyo; Farooq, Ali; Salminen, Joni; Aldous, Kholoud; Msefula, Pilira Stella; Alabed, Amani; Khan, Salar M.; O’Kennedy, Richard
2025	From consumers to consumption: The socio-technical assemblage of the persona in market segmentation	Syrjälä, Henna; Ruiz, Carlos Diaz; Leipämaa-Leskinen, Hanna; Luomala, Harri T.