◆ Hello, please introduce yourself.
I am Moon Sung-kyun, a new professor at Sungkyunkwan University. I am studying marketing strategies in business administration.

◆ Your name is 'Sungkyun'. When you were appointed as a new professor at Sungkyunkwan University, what were the reactions of those around you?
Since I graduated from Sungkyunkwan University for both my undergraduate and master's degrees, many people were surprised. After my doctoral studies, I worked at Bocconi University in Italy, and my master's advisor and other professors often said that it would be nice if I came to my alma mater. In fact, I was grateful to be appointed as a new professor at my alma mater, and I think many people around me liked and welcomed me.

◆ Please tell me a funny story related to your name.
When I was a high school student, I went to Moonseong High School. At the time, my high school teacher jokingly told me that since I had filled in Moonseong in my name, I should go to Sungkyunkwan University and fill in the rest of Sungkyunkwan. I really ended up going to Sungkyunkwan University. If you look at my resume, there are a lot of places with the word Sungkyunkwan in addition to the name section. In a way, I think the word ‘Sungkyunkwan’ fills and reveals my existence.

◆ Could you explain each professor's major in detail?
I am mainly researching the field of measuring the financial effects of marketing, especially in marketing. I am conducting interdisciplinary research that combines marketing and various management theories, such as measuring the effects of marketing and how much the effects can increase corporate value.

◆ Do you have any recent interests in your research field?
I wrote my doctoral thesis on ‘What practical effects can marketing-related information have on corporate investment?’ Since market fluctuations and marketing interact with each other, I started studying how marketing changes according to the legal environment and regulations, starting from the result that marketing behavior changes stock prices and stock price fluctuations change marketing behavior. Changes in the legal environment can have a negative impact on companies, but conversely, companies can increase their marketing activities to overcome it, so it has legal and policy implications beyond simple corporate environmental issues. In this way, I think I have been consistently pursuing interdisciplinary research that goes beyond the realm of marketing.

◆ Is there a reason you chose the specialized majors of marketing and microbiology?
I was originally interested in the civil service exam. When I was an undergraduate, Korean culture was not well known, so I had a dream of joining the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and promoting our culture. Then, I took a class called Marketing Management by Professor Sang-man Han, who was my master's degree advisor. It was a class that required a lot of work, but it was so fun and taught me so much that I forgot all about the boring major classes I had taken. The concept of customer value, which I first learned in marketing, and the process of marketing that finds, develops, and provides such customer value were so interesting to me. However, I still had a plan to take the civil service exam in my mind, but when I saw Professor Sang-man Han's notice that he was recruiting administrative assistants, I impulsively became an assistant, which was unusual for me. I think that was the turning point that led me to becoming a new professor at my alma mater.

◆ Lastly, if you have any ambitions as a new professor, please tell us.
When I was preparing for my doctorate, I asked a professor I respected how I could achieve a good balance between education and research. But the professor told me not to separate education and research, but to do them simultaneously. Professors are producers who produce knowledge, and students are consumers who consume knowledge, so I think the university mechanism itself is marketing. Therefore, I want to have the experience of growing together by understanding the needs and concerns of students regarding knowledge from the perspective of a producer and a consumer who learns from students.

Original text: Sungkyun Webzine No. 562 (https://webzine.skku.edu/skkuzine/section/people.do?articleNo=126806&pager.offset=0&pagerLimit=10)