Leila Hamzaoui Essoussi

Biography

Leila Hamzaoui-Essoussi has been a marketing professor since 2004 at the Telfer School of Management. Professor Hamzaoui has also been the director of the Master of Science in Management from 2014 to 2017. Her teaching areas are introduction to marketing, consumer behavior, marketing research and international marketing. She has also previously researched and taught in Canada at HEC Montréal, in France at the ESSEC business school and the Université de Paris XII, and in Tunisia at the IHEC Carthage, the ISET'COM and the Méditerranean School of Business.

Research in International Marketing

Her research focuses on brand management and the effects of one’s country of origin on consumer behaviour in industrialized and emerging countries, and on marketing strategies implemented in these markets. She is especially interested in international branding issues and in multinational production in terms of relocation, product development and communication strategies for companies offering multinational brands.

Dr. Hamzaoui-Essoussi also studies how places are perceived by their target markets in the context of globalization and intense competition. She researches how countries can enhance their attractiveness, particularly by managing and promoting the investment business more systematically through investment promotion agencies (IPAs), application of branding strategies and tools in managing a country’s image (“nation branding”), other types of advertising and promotion, and public diplomacy.

Research on Consumer Behaviour

Dr. Hamzaoui-Essoussi most recent scholarly activities include qualitative research on consumer perceptions of organic food (OF) and quantitative studies related to consumers' motivations and trust dimensions toward OF. She also studies distribution structures and certification processes and their impact on the development of the organic market. In 2010, she was awarded a major grant by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSRHC) to conduct research on the organic food market in Canada and Europe. In 2011, she was awarded a grant by the OMAF/MRA (Ministry of Agriculture and Food/Ministry of Rural Affairs) for assessing the Ontarian market potential and the understanding of, and confidence in, the organic food system. Dr. Hamzaoui-Essoussi also works on issues related to the consumption of other types of sustainable products: recycled and remanufactured products.

Her work was published in journals like Journal of International Food and Agribusiness Marketing, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Journal of Business Research, European Journal of Marketing, International Marketing Review, Journal of Consumer Marketing and Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal. She has made numerous presentations at national and international conferences. She serves as an ad hoc reviewer for numerous journals on a regular basis.