dr. Aylin Aydinli

Associate Professor, School of Business and Economics, Marketing

, Tinbergen Institute

Personal information

Aylin Aydinli is Associate Professor of Marketing at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Programme Director of the MSc Marketing programme at the School of Business and Economics. She earned her PhD in Marketing from London Business School and was previously a visiting scholar at Columbia Business School. Before entering academia, she worked in strategic marketing and public affairs in Europe and the United States, including roles at BMW and in public affairs consulting in Washington DC.

Her work combines consumer psychology and marketing strategy to address societal challenges related to sustainability, health, and inclusion. She is particularly interested in how marketing systems shape consumer decision making and everyday consumption practices.

Research

Aylin’s research focuses on consumer behavior, responsible marketing, and consumer well-being. She studies how consumers respond to marketplace signals such as pricing, promotions, branding, and communication strategies, particularly in contexts involving food consumption, sustainability, and identity.

Her research is organized around three interconnected themes:

food marketing, food waste, and healthy consumption;
sustainable and circular consumption;
marketplace inclusion, consumer identity, and stigma.

Industry: Food and retail, FMCG, branding and advertising, consumer goods.

Sector: Retail, consumer goods, sustainability, public health.

Application Domain: Consumer insights, pricing and promotions, responsible marketing, behavior change, inclusive marketing.

Her work uses a multi-method approach combining experiments, field studies, secondary data, meta-analysis, and qualitative methods. She actively collaborates with companies and societal organizations on research with both academic and practical relevance.

Her research has been supported by competitive national and international funding, including a prestigious NWO VENI grant examining the impact of retailer price promotions on household food waste.

Research Interests:

Consumer behavior
Responsible marketing
Consumer well-being
Food marketing and health
Food waste and sustainable consumption
Circular consumption
Pricing and promotions
Marketplace inclusion and stigma
Consumer identity
Behavioral decision making

Teaching

Aylin teaches executive and post-graduate courses on consumer marketing, customer analytics, and international marketing. Her teaching emphasizes the integration of academic rigor, real-world business challenges, and societal relevance.

Since 2022, she has served as Programme Director of the MSc Marketing programme at VU Amsterdam, where she has led curriculum redesign and educational innovation initiatives, including the development of specialization tracks, Active Blended Learning initiatives, and thesis preparation platforms.

Prizes and Awards

Winner of the 2025 AMA-EBSCO-RRBM Award for Responsible Research in Marketing
Finalist for the AMS Sheth Foundation Best Paper Award (2021)
Amsterdam Business Research Institute Best Faculty Paper Award (2014)
AMA-Sheth Doctoral Consortium Fellow, Michigan University (2013)
PhD Program Financial Award, London Business School (2008-2012)

Grants

2025: SWOCC Research Grant – Diversity and Inclusion in Branding and Advertising
2023: Stimuleringsbeurs (Incentive Grant), VU SBE, (€ 240,000)
2021: Transformative Consumer Research Grant
2019: VENI Grant (€250,000) to fund three-year research program, Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO)
2012-2013: Research and Materials Development Fund, London Business School

Ancillary activities

No ancillary activities

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