SMU Associate Professor of Information Systems Guo Zhiling looks at the impact of information technology on consumer behaviour and business strategy. By bringing together modelling techniques from the fields of economics and marketing, she studies how social recommendation technology and economic incentives can alter consumer referral behaviour in the context of social media marketing. More specifically, her research answers questions such as when to offer a referral reward and how much of the reward to offer to existing consumers, to what degree existing customers can be motivated to respond to financial incentives, and what is the likelihood of converting potential consumers into purchasers by combining economic incentives with social media technologies. She also guides companies on how to craft incentive-based digital marketing strategies that maximise the social media reach of loyal customers and monetise the existing customer base.