Nathan Yang

Assistant Professor in Marketing McGill Desautels Faculty of Management

Nathan Yang is an Assistant Professor in Marketing at McGill Desautels Faculty of Management, as well as Project Coordinator for the BSRM-IVADO Research Initiative. He is also a Research Fellow at the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative (CIREQ), Researcher at the Center for Interuniversity Research and Analysis of Organizations (CIRANO), Academic Member at the McGill Centre for the Convergence of Health and Economics (MCCHE), Faculty Associate at the Canadian Centre for Health Economics (CCHE), Member at the Group for Research in Decision Analysis (GERAD), Associated Member at the Institute for Data Valorization (IVADO), and Affiliate Member at the McGill Bensadoun School of Retail Management (BSRM).

His main research interests are in big data and machine learning, health and wellness, behavioral science, retail, and empirical industrial organization. Much of his earlier work aims to gain a better understanding about market expansion strategies in various retail sectors (e.g., convenience stores, fast food restaurants, fast casual restaurants), whereby market expansion is a key instrument to grow a retailer's brand, and ultimately, sales. In addition to retailer expansion strategies, he has worked on (or is currently working on) projects that focus on various aspects of customer relationship management in a diverse set of industries, including appliances, bike sharing, car rentals, electronic health platforms, fast fashion, loan markets, social media, large international commercial weight loss programs, mobile weight loss apps, video games, and WiFi tracking. His most recent research attempts to blend together behavioral science, big data, economics, and machine learning to help nudge people towards healthier lifestyles.

His research has been published (or is forthcoming) in Marketing Science, Management Science, Quantitative Economics, International Journal of the Economics of Business, and the Review of Network Economics, and has been widely cited by popular press, including The Economist, Financial Times, and LA Times. He has secured numerous grants to fund his research (e.g., MSI, IVADO, SSHRC, NET Institute).