The Marketing Department at the UConn School of Business hosted its 13th annual Voya Financial Colloquium on the topic of “Brands and Brand Relationships.” The event, held on Oct 24th, 2025, brought together researchers from diverse perspectives to discuss the role of brands in the changing landscape.
“This year’s topic is especially timely given recent technological advancements that have left many organizations wondering how to stay relevant. Brands are an extremely powerful marketing tool that companies can, and should, use to their advantage,” said UConn Marketing professor Danielle Brick, who co-organized the event.
The colloquium featured four distinguished speakers – Professors Barbara Kahn, Matt Thomson, Shane Wang and Alicia Jessop. Each of the speakers provided a different lens to explore the topic, including marketing, technology, and law, as well as different methodologies, including experimental and econometric approaches.
The colloquium fostered lively discussion between speakers and participants on practical and policy implications and future research. Faculty and doctoral students from across the UConn campuses as well as guests from UMass and URI participated in the event.
Below are profiles of the guest speakers and the title of their presentations:
Barbara Kahn presented her research on, “Who Should Adopt a Minimalist Logo? The Interplay Between Brand Strength and Logo Simplicity.” Barbara is the Patty and Jay H. Baker Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania. She is an internationally recognized scholar on retailing, variety-seeking, brand loyalty, product assortment and design, and consumer and patient decision-making. She has published more than 80 articles in leading academic journals. She is the author of Global Brand Power: Leveraging Branding for Long-Term Growth and The Shopping Revolution (revised and updated): How Retailers Succeed in an Era of Endless Disruption Accelerated by Covid-19, and coauthor of Grocery Revolution: The New Focus on the Consumer and Visual Marketing: A Practical Guide to the Science of Branding and Retailing. She has been featured in CNN, CNBC, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, NPR, Vox, Politico, and the Hidden Brain Podcast. She also served as Director of the Jay H. Baker Retailing Center and as Executive Director of Marketing Science Institute (MSI). She is the former Dean of the University of Miami’s Herbert School of Business and former Vice Dean of the Wharton undergraduate program. She was elected as a Fellow for both Association for Consumer Research (ACR) and Society for Consumer Psychology (SCP). Barbara received her PhD, MBA, and MPhil from Columbia University, and her BA from University of Rochester.
Matt Thomson presented his paper, “Title: E Pluribus Unum: Exploring the Effects of Billboarding on Consumer Brand Support.” Matt is the Charles D. Schewe Faculty Fellow and Professor at the Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts Amherst. He completed his PhD at the University of Southern California and earned other degrees from Indiana University, Bloomington and McGill University. His research interests lie at the intersection of brands, experiences and relationships. He serves as the Marketing PhD Coordinator at Isenberg and as an Associate Editor at the Journal of Consumer Psychology. In 2021, he served as co-chair for the Association for Consumer Research’s annual meeting. In 2025, a paper he co-authored with Debbie MacInnis and CW Park won the Journal of Consumer Psychology’s inaugural “Long Term Contribution Award.”
Shane Wang presented his work on, “Predicting Behaviors with LLM-Powered Digital Twins of Consumers.” Shane is a Professor of Marketing at Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech University. His research examines how emerging technologies transform business strategy and consumer behavior. Currently, his work and teaching focus on AI agents and synthetic data, with an emphasis on their strategic impact on businesses and consumer markets. He has been consistently recognized as one of the Top 50 Most Productive Marketing Scholars. Shane was named to the MSI Young Scholar (2021) and the MSI Scholar (2024). Shane is a member of the academic council at the American Marketing Association. He currently serves as Senior Editor for Production and Operations Management and as Associate Editor for the Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Journal of Retailing. He is also a member of the editorial review boards for the Journal of Marketing Research and Journal of Consumer Research.
Alicia Jessop presented her research on, “The Marketability of NCAA Women’s Sports and Athletes pre-NIL and post-NCAA v. House: Lessons Learned and Opportunities for Growth.” Alicia is a Professor of Sport Administration at Pepperdine University, attorney, and founder of the media platform Ruling Sports. Her research focuses on the application of law to matters of athlete and sport consumer welfare. Since 2011 she has contributed hundreds of sports business articles to Forbes, CNBC, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post and The Athletic. Alicia is an advocate for college athletes’ rights and has drafted proposed federal legislation with U.S. Senators and Congresspeople. In 2023 she was appointed as one of 16 members to the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Oversight Committee. In her legal practice, she represents athletes and sport businesses in transactional and intellectual property matters, including sponsorship and NIL negotiation. A past-President of the Sport and Recreation Law Association, Alicia is currently the Co-Chair of the Sports Division of the American Bar Association’s Forum on the Entertainment and Sports Industries and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.