Project “POP-AI” is implemented within the framework of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan 2021–2026 and is financed by European Union funds through the NextGenerationEU instrument.
Research team
Izv.prof. Andrea Lučić is an Associate Professor at the Department of Marketing, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, with more than 15 years of academic experience in sustainable marketing and responsible consumer behavior. She teaches across integrated undergraduate and graduate programs, including courses in sustainability, marketing fundamentals, and ethics in marketing.
She completed her university degree (Mag. oec., Finance) among the top 10% of students and was a four-time recipient of the Dean’s Award for outstanding academic achievement. She also spent her final year of study as an exchange student at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. In 2015, she earned her PhD in sustainable marketing; her dissertation received international recognition as one of Europe’s top doctoral theses according to EDAMBA.
Her scientific productivity and international visibility are reflected in continuous publication in prestigious journals in marketing, consumer behavior, and sustainable development, including multiple WOS Q1 (as reported for 2025). Since defending her PhD, she has authored 40+ peer-reviewed publications with a median impact factor of 3.7). Her work has also been featured in national media such as Jutarnji list, Večernji list, HRT, Nova TV, and NEFE channels.
Andrea LED the Croatian Science Foundation project EfFICAcY project (HRZZ UIP-2019-04-3580), and participated in international projects DIGIT_NAWA and the Strength2Food HORIZON. She is currently leading a scientific projekct POP-AI andBudi FIN, an educational program aimed at strengthening financial literacy and responsible decision-making among young people.
Her achievements include the American Council on Consumer Interests Best Paper Award at ACCI 2025 (NEFE / ACCI) and recognition for research excellence, including EDAMBA acknowledgement of her dissertation among Europe’s top doctoral theses (2015). Methodologically, she is experienced in longitudinal designs, mixed methods, and experimental research, and has developed measurement instruments that have been adopted and translated in scholarly and applied studies. She has supervised 90+ student theses, including one completed PhD
Prof. Marija Tomašević Lišanin is a Full Professor (tenured) at the Department of Marketing, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb. In the integrated university program, she is the course leader for Marketing, Professional Selling and Negotiation, and Sales Management. At the graduate Master’s Degree in Marketing program and within the Erasmus+ framework, she teaches the mandatory course Personal Selling and Negotiation and the elective course Sales Management.
In the University Specialist Postgraduate Programs at the Faculty, she teaches Sales and Key Account Management, Sales and Distribution Strategies, and Business Negotiation. She has also contributed to courses across other departments at the Faculty (Finance, Trade, Management) and has taught in university programs at other faculties in Croatia and the region (Osijek, Split, Sarajevo).
At the doctoral level, she was for many years a co-instructor of the mandatory course Selected Topics in Business Management and is the instructor of the elective Theory and Practice of Selling and Negotiation. In the joint international doctoral program Business Economics in the Digital Environment, delivered by the Faculty of Economics and Business in collaboration with University of Dubrovnik, she co-teaches International Business Negotiation.
She is the founder and (co-)director of the university specialist postgraduate program Sales Management, and she also founded and served for ten years as President of the professional sales association HUPUP. Prior to joining academia, she worked at Končar Trgovina in export operations for Austria and Finland.
Her academic and professional training includes experience at European and U.S. universities, as well as placements in industry and finance, including Sparkasse Mainz and Semelroth Consulting. As a Fulbright Program pre-doctoral scholar (1995/1996), she spent a year at University of Texas at Austin and University of Kentucky, and she has received numerous research and teaching scholarships across the European Union (including Germany, Austria, the UK, Hungary, and Italy).
She has authored more than 120 publications in Croatian and international outlets in the fields of marketing, sales, negotiation, and financial services marketing. She is the sole author of books including Bank Marketing, Professional Selling and Negotiation, and Sales and Negotiation Business Cases, and has co-authored eleven additional marketing textbooks and books published in Croatia and three internationally. She has also translated—individually and with collaborators—several major textbooks and classical professional works in marketing, marketing planning, and business negotiation.
She has contributed as a principal investigator or team member to seven scientific projects and numerous professional projects, and has supervised dozens of student theses at the seminar, undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate levels, including three completed PhD dissertations. For her contributions to the development of economic science, she has twice received the Dr. Mijo Mirković Award, and in 2020 she received the Fedor Rocco marketing award for co-authoring the textbook Principles of Selling and Negotiation.
Prof. Dubravka Sinčić is a Full Professor (tenured) at the Department of Marketing, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb. Her research interests include B2B marketing, sustainability marketing, corporate social responsibility, resilience and marketing flexibility, and the application of artificial intelligence in marketing.
She currently serves as Head of the Bachelor Degree in Business program and the Master Degree in Business (Marketing) program. Previously, she was Head of the Department of Marketing, Chair of the Graduate Marketing Program, and a member of numerous faculty committees and councils. As an author or co-author, she has published more than 50 scientific papers, two scholarly books, two university textbooks, and numerous conference papers in her research fields. She received the Dr. Mijo Mirković Award in 2001 and 2020 (for a textbook and a scholarly book) and the Fedor Rocco Award in 2017 (for a scientific paper). She was a visiting lecturer for two years at WU Vienna (Vienna University of Economics and Business) and for four years at the Faculty of Economics, University of Split, and she has delivered guest lectures in the United States, Canada, across Europe, and in Croatia.
Prof. Sinčić is a member of the editorial boards of Zagreb International Review of Economics & Business and Ekonomski pregled. She regularly serves as a reviewer for journals and conferences in management, marketing, and B2B marketing, and she is an active leader and researcher on competitive scientific projects funded by the Croatian Science Foundation, the European Commission (Horizon Europe), the NAWA, and other competitive university and research initiatives. She is a member of the Executive Board of CROMAR and a member of EMAC.
She also has extensive advisory experience, particularly as a moderator and facilitator of organizational processes in companies, and is an expert in scenario planning methodology. She chairs the Technical Committee for Advertising Services, Administration, and Commercial/Office Management (TK22) responsible for awarding the Croatian Quality and Original Croatian marks at the Croatian Chamber of Economy, and she is a member of the International Chamber of Commerce. She previously served as Chair of the Working Group for the development of the identity and brand of the Republic of Croatia, appointed by the President of Croatia, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović (2018). She is currently involved as an advisor in the organization of the UNWASTED Summit, dedicated to advancing sustainable development practices.
Prof. Sunčana Piri Rajh is a Full Professor (tenured) at the Department of Marketing, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, where she has been employed since 1998. She completed her undergraduate degree, master’s degree, and PhD at the same faculty.
At the Faculty of Economics and Business, she teaches across the integrated undergraduate and graduate university programs, the English-taught graduate program, two university specialist professional graduate programs, and the doctoral program. Her research and teaching areas include consumer behavior and pricing management. Her main research interests focus on consumer decision-making styles, perceived value and perceived risk, consumer price sensitivity, and consumer behavior in digital environments. She publishes scientific and professional work as a sole author and in collaboration.
Prof. Piri Rajh has received three awards—two for published scientific papers (as co-author and as sole author) and one for a co-authored university textbook. She serves as a reviewer for scientific journals and for conference submissions, and participates in international and domestic conferences as a presenter and moderator. She was a guest editor of a special issue of Market-Tržište (2020) and served as an editor of the International Journal of Multidisciplinarity in Business and Science.
As a researcher, she has participated in five scientific research projects. She previously served for multiple years as Head of the Graduate University Program in Business Economics (Marketing major) and as Head of the Marketing track within the integrated Business Economics program. She proposed and introduced the course Pricing Management, which has been continuously delivered at the Faculty since the 2007/2008 academic year.
Prof. Piri Rajh is highly active in mentoring student research. Under her supervision, numerous undergraduate and graduate theses have been defended, and she has co-authored five publications with students. She has also supervised three professional master’s theses, eight specialist postgraduate theses, and one completed doctoral dissertation.
Prof. Mirko Palić is a Full Professor (tenured) at the Department of Marketing, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb. He teaches across professional and university undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as specialist postgraduate and doctoral programs, in both Croatian and English.
The courses he has taught include Marketing in Special Warfare, Principles of Marketing, Marketing Management, Marketing Channel Management, Distribution Channels, Marketing Channels and Contemporary Technologies, Retail Marketing Channels, Category Management and Private Labels, Entrepreneurial Marketing, and Selling and Negotiation Skills, among others. He previously served as Head of the Department of Marketing, Head of the Professional Undergraduate Program in Business Economics, and Head of the Professional Graduate Program in Retail Management and Marketing. He currently leads the Specialist Postgraduate Program in Sales Management.
Prof. Palić is the author or co-author of more than 80 scientific publications and has authored two secondary-school textbooks and three university textbooks. He has also served as an editor or editorial board member of several international scientific journals. His research expertise centers on retailing and distribution/marketing channels, and in recent years he has increasingly focused on the research and application of artificial intelligence in marketing.
Before joining academia, he held managerial positions at Konzum and Chromos (Tvornica grafičkih boja Samobor). He has participated in numerous commercial and scientific projects and in professional and scientific training in Croatia and abroad. The Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb has awarded him twice for outstanding teaching results over the past five years.
Irena Pandža Bajs was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She completed her undergraduate degree in Marketing at the Faculty of Economics, University of Sarajevo in 2002 as the top student of her cohort. She earned an MSc in Economics in 2008 after defending her master’s thesis within the postgraduate program Business Administration – MBA at the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb. In 2012, she successfully defended her PhD dissertation titled “The Role of Perceived Value in Tourism Destination Marketing”, earning the degree of PhD in Social Sciences (Economics), Marketing.
After graduating from the University of Sarajevo, she worked in the Directorate for Economic Affairs at Elektroprivreda BiH. In 2004, she joined the Faculty of Economics in Sarajevo as a teaching assistant in the Department of Microeconomics. Since November 2006, she has been employed at the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, Department of Marketing, where she has contributed to teaching across multiple courses, including Retail Marketing Communications, Principles of Marketing, Marketing Management, E-Marketing (online course), Marketing Strategy, and Business-to-Business Marketing.
From 2020 to 2023, she worked on a project funded by the European Social Fund in Croatia titled Modernization of the Vocational Education and Training System, aimed at strengthening inter-institutional cooperation and connecting education with social and economic sectors. Her role focused on labor market analysis and on the development and adoption of sectoral curricula for vocational qualifications.
As an author and co-author, she has published more than 40 scientific papers, two university textbooks, and one scholarly book. She received the Dr. Mijo Mirković Award for an outstanding single-author scientific article with a notable contribution to the field of economics, and the Fedor Rocco Award for the domestic monograph Customer Satisfaction Management. In 2020, she also received the annual Faculty of Economics and Business award for research with the strongest five-year impact, based on five-year citation performance of a paper indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection.
She is the Director of the university specialist postgraduate Business Administration – MBA program at the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, and currently serves as Chair of the Statutory Committee for Professional Studies at the Faculty. She is an editor of the International Journal of Multidiscilinarity in Business and Science and actively participates in national and international scientific conferences, including service on program and organizing committees for several international conferences.