SERVSIG is proud to announce Jan Schumann as the new Co-Liaison Officer of the SERVSIG board. Jan is Professor of Marketing and Innovation at the University of Passau. We invited Jan to introduce himself, so you get to know him better.
My name is Jan Schumann and I’m a Professor of Marketing and Innovation at the University of Passau, Germany, where I currently also serve as Dean of our School of Business, Economics and Information Systems. Before joining the University of Passau in 2012, I was an Assistant Professor at the TUM School of Management in Munich, Germany, where I also received my doctoral degree in 2009.
I first got in contact with service research when I studied Psychology at the University of Potsdam, Germany and the University of Sussex at Brighton, GB. As part of a student project and later on as diploma thesis, I studied customer satisfaction and customer interactions with frontline employees in Potsdam’s regional public transport. During this project I got in contact with all the exciting work on Services, before even knowing the history of the field and its roots in Marketing. When I decided to pursue a doctoral degree, this work of course also influenced a lot the positions that I looked for and the opportunities that I got. Early and totally unconscious choices can have very strong and prevailing consequences.
I was very fortunate to get the opportunity to pursue my doctoral degree under the supervision of Florian von Wangenheim. He was extremely supportive and introduced me early on into the world of conferences, journals, and research grants and got me into contact with iconic researchers, such as Mary Jo Bitner or Kay Lemon. At Florian’s Chair, I worked closely together with Nancy Wünderlich, who was a great sparring’s partner with the same passion for research. The opportunities to spent time as a visiting research scholar at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, at Boston College, and at City University in Hong Kong finally made it very clear for me that I wanted to spend my career in academia.
My primary research interests in services currently are consumer privacy concerns, service pricing, and the influence of technology in the service context with a particular focus on digital services. My work has been published by leading international journals, such as the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Retailing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Journal of Interactive Marketing. Moreover, my research has repeatedly received honors, such as a Journal of Service Research Best Article Award Finalist in 2010 and 2019, finalist for the best IJRM paper in 2016 and the 2017 Rigor and Relevance Award of the Swiss Academy of Marketing Science. Most important for me, in 2019 I received the Emerging Service Scholar Award by AMA SERVSIG.
As part of my service to the field, I support leading international scientific Journals as a member of the Editorial Reviewer Boards (Journal of Service Research: since 2013; Journal of Business Research: since 2016; Thunderbird International Business Review: 2013 – 2019; Psychology & Marketing: since 2020). I feel honored and excited about joining the SERVSIG board. It is a great opportunity to serve the global service community that I have had the privilege to be part of for many years now and which has become a very important part of both, my work and private life. At the SERVSIG Board, I will serve as Co-Liaison Officer (with Martin Mende); together, we are responsible for coordinating SERVSIG activities and presence at major conferences in the field (e.g., AMA, EMAC). So, if you would like to meet and talk to me, check out the SERVSIG receptions (once we will go back to normal) or contact me via email.
Apart from my academic career I love spending my time with my wife Angi, my daughter Anne and my son Oskar. We either simply hang around the house, work in the garden or go hiking, swimming, skiing, or ice-skating. I also love fishing, jogging and going to the movies and to restaurants. Given that the kids grow older, I am even increasingly able to follow these passions again.
