Auxtova, Kristina

Kristina joined the University of Dundee School of Business as Lecturer in Marketing in October 2019. Since July 2020, Kristina is acting as the School's Academic Lead for Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME).

Previously, Kristina held a Marketing Lectureship position at University College Cork in Ireland, where her teaching span areas of international marketing, consumer behaviour, marketing foundations and marketing for tech entrepreneurs.

She completed her PhD in Management at the University of Edinburgh in 2019. Prior to beginning her doctoral work, Kristina obtained a Master Grande Ecole in International and European Business from EM Strasbourg Business School in 2013, graduating with a distinction. She also graduated with a BA(Hons) in International Management and Intercultural Studies (1st class) from the University of Stirling.

Internal Roles & Memberships

• Academic Lead for Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME)
• Member of the Research and Knowledge Transfer Committee
• Member of the School Quality and Academic Standards & Learning and Teaching Committee 
• Member of the TPG Curriculum Review Steering Group
• Academic Advisor to BSc Business & Management students
• Academic Mentor to the University of Dundee Marketing Society

• Advertising regulation & ethics
• Advertising rhetoric
• Marketing ethics & the role of marketing in society
• Non-profit and public sector marketing
• Role of societal and cultural norms in consumption practices

Kristina is an interdisciplinary and multi-method researcher with a passion for social betterment. Her research interests focus on advertising ethics and regulation, specifically as applied to the public and non-profit contexts. She is also interested in the broader questions of ethics in marketing and marketing's impact on society, social and charity marketing, consumer vulnerability, emotions in relation to marketing communications, advertising rhetoric, and the role of societal and cultural norms in consumption practices. 

Kristina's PhD thesis developed a nuanced and in-depth understanding of shocking, offensive and controversial advertising within the public and non-profit sectors. It specifically explored the regulatory processes of such advertising tactics with an emphasis on interpretations of these by different stakeholder groups involved, including the public and non-profit organisations, advertising creatives, regulators, and audiences. Her thesis adopted stakeholder theory as an overarching frame and took a pragmatic and multi-method approach. It comprised of 1) a systematic review of shocking, offensive and controversial advertising; 2) a critical perspective on the regulatory practices and processes based on a critical discourse analysis of an archive of complaints and associated adjudication reports obtained from the Advertising Standards Authority UK; and 3) a visual and textual rhetorical analysis of complained-about offensive advertising. Her research contributes to the debate on the appropriateness, ethics and application of shocking, offensive or controversial themes, formats, and imagery in public and non-profit advertising.

Kristina is currently working on extending the rhetorical work from her thesis in several directions - one of a larger empirical study applying the methodological approach developed, and one of conceptualising shock advertising. She is also developing several other projects, particularly exploring how advertisers navigate the tight line between maintaining the inherently moral nature of charitable organisations, shocking and offending their audiences, and achieving their campaign objectives. A stream of this ethical decision-making oriented work is interested in the role of cultural and societal norms. Other emerging projects include an investigation of complaint behaviour in service termination situations and an exploration of the amplification of the controversies of the Irish abortion referendum on social media platforms.

Modules taught

• BU52008 Marketing Management and Strategy (Taught Postgraduate)
• BU30013 Marketing (3rd year Undergraduate)
• BU30018 Marketing Strategy (3rd year Undergraduate)
• BU42008 Branding and Marketing for Transitional Change (4th year Undergraduate)

Supervision

• UG dissertation supervision
• TPG summer project supervision
• DBA supervision