Kai Zhu
Assistant Professor
Biography
Kai Zhu is Assistant Professor in the Department of Marketing at Bocconi University. He holds a PhD in Information Systems from Boston University.
His research broadly explores how digital technologies transform markets, media, politics, and society. He is especially interested in the digital transformation of cultural markets—such as news, books, movies, and music—using computational tools like machine learning, natural language processing, causal inference, and network analysis to analyze large-scale structured and unstructured data to uncover human behavior and systemic dynamics.
At Bocconi, he teaches courses including Data Mining for Marketing, Business, and Society and Large Language Models for Market Research.
Among his selected publications are works on content growth and attention dynamics in information networks, media narratives in crises, and peer feedback effects on platform user content.
Recent Publications
- 2025
Monetizing Platforms: An Empirical Analysis of Supply and Demand Responses to Entry Costs in Two-Sided Markets
ZHU, K., Q. SHI, S. BANERJEE, "Monetizing Platforms: An Empirical Analysis of Supply and Demand Responses to Entry Costs in Two-Sided Markets", Management Science, 2025 - 2024
Negative Peer Feedback and User Content Generation: Evidence From a Restaurant Review Platform
ZHU, K., W. KHERN-AM-NUAI, Y. YU, "Negative Peer Feedback and User Content Generation: Evidence From a Restaurant Review Platform", Production and Operations Management, 2024 - 2023
Platform Monetization and Unintended Consequences for Digital Cultural Markets: Evidence from a Two-sided Market for Book Promotions
ZHU, K., Q. SHI, S. BANERJEE, "Platform Monetization and Unintended Consequences for Digital Cultural Markets: Evidence from a Two-sided Market for Book Promotions" in Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 2023 (HICSS-56), January 3-6, 2023, Maui, Hawaii, United States of America - 2022
Platform Monetization and Unintended Consequences on its Ecosystem: Evidence from a Two-sided Market for Books
ZHU, K., Q. SHI, S. BANERJEE, "Platform Monetization and Unintended Consequences on its Ecosystem: Evidence from a Two-sided Market for Books" in EMAC Annual Conference, May 24-27, 2022, Budapest, Hungary - 2022
If a Tree Falls in the Forest: Presidential Press Conferences and Early Media Narratives about the COVID-19 Crisis
KRUPENKIN, M., K. ZHU, D. WALKER, D. ROTHSCHILD, "If a Tree Falls in the Forest: Presidential Press Conferences and Early Media Narratives about the COVID-19 Crisis", Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, 2022, vol. 2, pp. 1-72 - 2021
Platform Monetization in a Two-sided Market: A Natural Experiment on Goodreads.com
ZHU, K., Q. SHI, S. BANERJEE, "Platform Monetization in a Two-sided Market: A Natural Experiment on Goodreads.com" in 2021 Conference on Digital Experimentation @ MIT (CODE@MIT), November 4-5, 2021, (online), United States of America - 2020
Content Growth and Attention Contagion in Information Networks: Addressing Information Poverty on Wikipedia
ZHU, K., D. WALKER, L. MUCHNIK, "Content Growth and Attention Contagion in Information Networks: Addressing Information Poverty on Wikipedia", Information Systems Research, 2020, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 491-509 - 2015
Attribute reduction approaches for general relation decision systems
LIU, G., L. LI, J. YANG, Y. FENG, K. ZHU, "Attribute reduction approaches for general relation decision systems", Pattern Recognition Letters, 2015, vol. 65, pp. 81-87 - 2014
The relationship among three types of rough approximation pairs
LIU, G., K. ZHU, "The relationship among three types of rough approximation pairs", Knowledge-Based Systems, 2014, vol. 60, pp. 28-34
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