Recently, the academic paper “Genes and Sales” co-authored by Associate Professor Gong Shiyang and Professor Su Song from the Department of Digital Economy and Management of our School was published in Management Science, one of the top academic journals of management in UTDallas24. The achievement was jointly completed by our university and Professor Li Qian from Beijing Foreign Studies University and Professor Zhang Juanjuan from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Associate Professor Gong Shiyang is the first author of the paper, and Professor Su Song is the corresponding author.

Management Science, founded in 1954 and sponsored by the American Society of Operations Research and Management, is a top journal in the field of management with a long history and the highest reputation. The journal is one of the top 24 business school academic journals (UTD24) selected by The University of Texas at Dallas and one of the top 50 business school journals rated by the Financial Times (FT50).

This paper presents one of the first marketing applications of molecular genetics. We report evidence that salespeople’s genetic variants linked to educational attainment predict sales performance. Both genetics and selling effort contribute to sales performance, whereas genetics contribute more than personality traits. We further show that adaptive learning, as captured in salespeople’s customer orientation and opportunity recognition skills, may explain the gene-sales relationship. We discuss the implications of these findings for sales management and the value of genetic research for the marketing field.

Details of the paper:

Shiyang Gong, Qian Li, Song Su, Juanjuan Zhang (2023) Genes and Sales. Management Science, https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4879.

About the author:

Gong Shiyang is an associate professor and doctoral supervisor in the Department of Digital Economy and Management, and a visiting scholar at MIT. His research field is digital marketing and marketing technology, focusing on the application of big data and interdisciplinary methods to expand marketing technology. He published nearly 20 papers in Management Science (UTD24/ABS4*), Journal of Marketing Research (UTD24/ABS4*) and Psychological Science (ABS4*), “Psychological Journal”, “Nankai Management Review”, “Guangming Daily (Theoretical edition)”and other academic journals at home and abroad. He has presided over one National Natural Science Foundation project and one youth project each, two provincial and ministerial research projects, and participated in more than ten national and provincial research projects. His work was selected by the Journal of Marketing Research as the first article of the current issue and has been recognized by the Marketing Science Institute, Yahoo! Tech), MIT News and others. He has won Emerald Highly Appraised Thesis Award, Young Top Talent of School of Economics and Management of Beijing Normal University, Huiyuan Outstanding Young Scholar of University of International Business and Economics, and first prize of excellent doctoral thesis of Tsinghua University.

Su Song is a Professor and doctoral supervisor of the Department of Digital Economy and Management, Visiting scholar at MIT Sloan School of Management and Director of the Research Center for Financial Literacy Education at Beijing Normal University. He is also the executive director of the Marketing Research Association of Chinese Universities, the director of the Neuromanagement and Neuroengineering Branch of the Chinese Society of Management Science and Engineering, and the National Natural Science Foundation project communication review expert. His main research areas include decision-making psychology, sensory marketing, financial decision-making behavior, financial literacy education, artificial intelligence ethics, management behavior from a biological perspective, etc. He published more than 30 academic papers in Management Science(UTD24/ABS4*), Journal of Interactive Marketing and Journal of Business have been in Research, Management World, Journal of Management Science, Journal of Psychology, Nankai Management Review, International Finance Research and Economics Trends. He has presided over a number of National Natural Science Foundation projects and Humanities and Social Science foundation projects of the Ministry of Education. He is also one of the pioneers of financial literacy education in China and has released China's first White Paper on Financial Literacy of Chinese residents.