Allard van Riel

Professor of service innovation management in the Marketing and Strategy department, Hasselt University, Belgium

Prof. Dr. Allard C.R. van Riel is a professor of service innovation management in the Marketing and Strategy department of Hasselt University, in Belgium. He holds a PhD in Service Innovation Management from Maastricht University (2003). Between 2004 and 2009 he held the ArcelorMittal Chair in Innovation Strategy and Management at the University of Liege in Belgium. He was a professor of service innovation management at Radboud University in the Netherlands between 2009-2018. He published, among others, in Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Service Management, Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Services Marketing, and Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing. He is currently focusing on sustainable innovation in complex and high-tech service environments, among which tourism and hospitality.

Anil Bilgihan

Professor at the College of Business, Florida Atlantic University, USA

Dr. Anil Bilgihan is a professor at the Florida Atlantic University within the College of Business where he holds the Dean’s Distinguished Research Fellowship. He has over 100 refereed journal articles that have received over 15000 citations in the areas of e-commerce and Hospitality Information Systems. He holds a Ph.D. degree from Rosen College of Hospitality Management and an M.S. degree from the University of Delaware. His research involves the use and impact of technology, user experience, digital marketing, and online social interactions in the services industries that appeared in prestigious journals including Tourism Management, Information & Management, Internet Research, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Computers in Human Behavior, Electronic Research Commerce and Applications, Journal of Service Management, and International Journal of Information Management among others. He is the co-author of Hospitality Information Technology, Learning How to Use It. He is the associate editor of the Psychology & Marketing and co-editor of the Journal of International Hospitality Management. He is the recipient of several awards including the FAU Scholar of the Year, Cisco Extensive Research Award and Highly Commended Award winner of the Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards.

Christian Kowalkowski

Professor of Industrial Marketing at Linköping University, Sweden

Christian Kowalkowski is Professor of Industrial Marketing at Linköping University, Sweden. He serves as Area Editor for Servitization in the Journal of Service Management and has been published in journals such as the Journal of Service Research, Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, and Journal of Service Management. As the only Sweden-based scholar in Economics and Business, he is on the 2022 and 2023 Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher list. Dr. Kowalkowski has rapidly established himself as a leading authority in the field of B2B service strategy research. For over 15 years, through research, consulting, and educational activities focusing on service strategy and implementation, he has collaborated with market-leading multinationals in various product industries. His research has been published in over 100 scholarly papers and books and presented at academic and industry conferences in Europe, North America, Asia, and Australasia. In the book Service Strategy in Action: A Practical Guide for Growing Your B2B Service and Solution Business (2017), he share his practical twelve-step roadmap for crafting and executing a successful service-growth strategy. Currently, he is studying the interplay between digitalization and servitization, service innovation in ecosystems, and the emergence of new platform-based business models in B2B industries.

David Solnet

Professor of service management and service work, University of Queensland Business School, Australia

David Solnet is professor of service management and service work at the University of Queensland Business School in Brisbane Australia. He comes from a restaurant background, with over 18 years of experience including senior management roles in the USA and Australia. David is recognized internationally for his research, teaching and consulting and has published over 50 academic peer reviewed articles, nearly all in Q1 journals, with over 7,000 Google Scholar citations. He has authored many industry reports, media stories, government reports, books and book chapters, on service management and service work (principally on frontline service employees). He is a sought-after speaker, with recent presentations on the future of service education, the future of service work, and the critical importance of strategically connecting consulting, research, teaching and industry engagement. He works closely with Austrade, Australia’s national commission on trade and exports, providing advice on workforce policy. More recently he has worked within the university on supporting the development of a student-centred culture, developing frontline employee training systems. His ability to build bridges and create international collaborations leveraging his industry connections was identified as critical to his promotion to full professor in 2023.

Jay Kandampully

Professor of service management and hospitality, The Ohio State University, USA

Dr. Jay Kandampully is a professor of service management and hospitality at The Ohio State University, USA. He serves as the CTF International Fellow at the University of Karlstad, Sweden and International Fellow at the University of Namur, Belgium. Jay is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Service Management (JOSM) and serves on the editorial advisory board of 10 refereed international journals. Jay is cited by Stanford University’s Index 2021 of top 2% scientists in their fields, based on citations of research. He holds a PhD in service quality management, and an MBA, specialising in services marketing, both from the University of Exeter, England. His professional qualification is in Hotel Management from Salzburg, Austria and from the University College Birmingham, UK. His educational qualifications have been well supported by nine years of senior management roles in Europe, India and in the USA. As an academic he lived and worked in New Zealand and Australia prior to moving to the USA. Jay has published many books and has published over 130 articles in top tier journals and has served as keynote speakers at international conferences.

Linda Alkire

Associate Professor of Marketing, and Brandon Dee Roberts Excellence Endowed Professor Texas State University, USA

Dr. Linda Alkire is Associate Professor of Marketing, and Brandon Dee Roberts Excellence Endowed Professor at Texas State University, USA. Through her global and sustained research efforts, Dr. Alkire gained an international reputation and is among the thought leaders in the area of Transformative Service Research. In particular, Dr. Alkire embraces transdisciplinary research seeking to contribute to the well-being of society by offering transformative insights to service providers. Dr. Alkire has published over 30 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals, given over 60 conference presentations, awarded over 14 prestigious awards for her research, and has been invited to extended research visits to universities in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Italy, Germany, and Belgium. She serves in editorial roles, including Editorial Director and Associate Editor, across three leading service research journals. Dr. Alkire’s aspiration for her research is to cultivate inclusion in academia by supporting researchers and students from emerging countries.

Srikanth Beldona

Professor and Department Chair of Department of Hospitality & Sport Business Management at Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware, USA

Srikanth Beldona is a Professor and Department Chair of the Department of Hospitality & Sport Business Management at the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware. He earned his Ph.D. from Purdue University. His focus of research is on consumer psychology as it relates to hospitality-based experiences and digital marketing in hospitality and travel. His research has appeared in the International Journal of Hospitality Management, Journal of Service Management, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, Journal of Travel Research and Tourism Management among others. He serves on the editorial boards of the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management, Information Technology in Tourism and the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology. Beldona was honored as one of 2015’s Top 25 Most Extraordinary Minds in Hospitality Marketing by Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International (HSMAI). He has been interviewed and cited on hospitality and travel trends in publications such as the Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Adweek etc.

Werner H. Kunz

Professor of Marketing and Director of the digital media lab at the University of Massachusetts Boston

Werner H. Kunz is Professor of Marketing and Director of the digital media lab at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His research interests are in service technology, incl. AI, service robots, company innovativeness, and digital media. His work has been published, amongst others, in the Journal of Service Research, Journal of Retailing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Tourism Management, and Computational Statistics and was awarded multiple times. Among many honors, Professor Kunz is the inaugural recipient of the Bo Edvardsson “Industry Impact in Services” Award. He is the Senior Editor of the Journal of Service Research and a current board member of the Service Research Special Interest Group (SERVSIG) of the American Marketing Association (AMA), the primary professional association of service researchers with over 2000 community members worldwide.