I was informed that Evert Gummesson, my good friend and a valued colleague of all of us, passed away yesterday. I am sure our thoughts are with his wife Anet and his two daughters. I met Evert in the 1970s and ever since we worked together, compared notes, attended conferences together, and published a few articles jointly.
Evert was a true pioneer of our service research field. He was instrumental in the creation of the Nordic School and also argued that service marketing is much broader than conventional marketing and, therefore, he started to talk about service management. He also broadened service marketing towards relationship marketing and many-to-many marketing.
A true pioneer and legend has left us.
Christian Grönroos
In 1981, I was fortunate to meet Evert and Christian at the first services conference held in North America. It was the beginning of beautiful friendships.As Christian summarized, Evert was an essential catalyst in helping build and broaden the service research field. Evert was a fascinating person with a generous spirit who personified service. He will be dearly missed!
Ray Fisk
I first met Evert in my early days of looking at service. He was a major influence in helping me develop my ides and research. He will be missed.
In memory of Evert Gummesson (1936-2023) https://service-science.info/archives/6438
I got to know Evert when we co-chaired the inaugural QUIS conference at Karlstad University. This was a landmark international conference with most of the early service scholars contributing along with some leading global executives. Evert was a pleasure to work with – professional, forward-thinking, and committed to making that first QUIS conference extraordinary.
Subsequent encounters and work with Evert were always special. I could always count on him to have a new provocative and thoughtful new idea to share.
Evert was a consummate scholar. I will miss his wit, contributions and mostly his friendship.
Stephen W. Brown