Yuanzhu Zhan

Biography

Yuanzhu Zhan is a Lecturer in Operations Management at the University of Liverpool. Prior to this, Yuanzhu obtained his BSc degree in Business and Finance (First Class) and an MSc degree in Risk Management (Distinction). In 2013, he started his Ph.D. in Business and Management at the University of Nottingham. His research investigates how organisations can improve their competitiveness by attaining accelerated product innovation in a big data environment. Yuanzhu has a large amount of industrial experience in both the UK and China. His work has been published in the areas of operations management, big data, product innovation, and sustainable supply chain management.

Research Interest

This study explores how big data can be used to enable customers to express unrecognised needs. By acquiring this information, managers can gain opportunities to develop customer-centred products. Big data can be defined as multimedia-rich and interactive low-cost information resulting from mass communication. It offers customers a better understanding of new products and provides new, simplified modes of large-scale interaction between customers and firms. Although previous studies have pointed out that firms can better understand customers’ preferences and needs by leveraging different types of available data, the situation is evolving, with increasing application of big data analytics for product development, operations and supply chain management. In order to utilise the customer information available from big data to a larger extent, managers need to identify how to establish a customer-involving environment that encourages customers to share their ideas with managers, contribute their know-how, fiddle around with new products, and express their actual preferences.