For our “Getting to know” series, Hugo Guyader interviewed Jonas Holmqvist.
Jonas is Associate Professor of Marketing at Kedge Business School in Bordeaux, France. He obtained his PhD in Business Administration in 2009 from Hanken School of Economics in Finland, before moving to Kedge in 2011, where he became associate professor in 2016. Jonas sits on several ERB of service journals, as well as he is an Area Editor for JSTP. He is also the co-chair of the 13th SERVSIG conference next month.
Let’s ask him a few questions about his career in service research.
Your PhD thesis is titled “Language Influence in Services: Perceived Importance of Native Language Use in Service Encounters” and you have since published many papers on communication in service interactions. Where did your interest in languages come from?
I guess that being part of a relatively small linguistic minority, the 5% of native Swedish speaking Finns, means that I was always aware of many of the issues facing minority language speakers. That said, my real interest in languages was sparked by “discovering” the Welsh language in my teens during a summer exchange to the UK. Meeting people living in the UK who almost never spoke English was fascinating, and visiting Wales with my host family and hearing this language I had never known really captivated me. I bought my first course in Welsh during that trip and started learning. So my first real passion in language learning became the Celtic languages. My Welsh and Irish Gaelic remain rather fluent while my Breton and Scottish Gaelic are at a more basic level.
How many languages do you speak now?
It depends a bit on how you define speaking. For tourism purposes, such as getting by in hotels and restaurants and basic conversations, I get by in ten languages, with Welsh and Irish Gaelic probably being the most “unusual ones”, and I am currently trying to improve my Basque (I admit I have taken a break to focus on Servsig at the moment) as I live so close to the Basque region.
How many languages can you lecture in?
If you ask me to stand up a give a lecture unprepared, I am only able to do it in four languages: Swedish, English, French and Italian. If I get time to prepare the lecture, I could add Finnish and German.
Is linguistic still a topic of interest?
Absolutely! Languages and cultures are my greatest interest and I have well over 300 books about languages and linguistics in my home library. I do feel passionately about languages. Much as I recognize the advantages of English as a lingua franca in academia, I would hate to see our linguistic diversity disappear.
How was your PhD education at Hanken important for your focus on service?
Doing a PhD at Hanken at the time, it was more or less understood you would work on services. That said, it was also something I really wanted to do. It might sound strange to still have to say this, but I believe that service research remains one of the most important yet underestimated parts of business. I know we, as a field, have come a very long way, but if we look at how very dominating services are in the economy of most countries, often making up around 80% of the total economy, I feel service research could claim even more ground.
How was professor Grönroos influential for your career?
Christian has of course been tremendously important for my career in multiple ways. Already as a first-year student, his lectures made me want to become an academic. In my final year of my Master’s studies, his specialized course on service marketing really inspired me and – in many ways – became the benchmark based on which I later would develop my own courses. Many aspects of my teaching that students tell me they appreciate, such as detailed in-class discussions and assigning academic articles for students to read and present, were all inspired by Christian’s teaching.
During my PhD Christian was very supportive. I started the PhD to work on value perceptions, but after a year I wanted to abandon it and work on language use in services as well. I guess many supervisors might be a bit negative to a PhD student completely changing track after one year, but Christian was highly supportive of it. After my PhD, we have continued to work together on numerous articles, so obviously Christian’s influence on my career cannot be overstated.
Did you enjoy life in Helsinki? Are you born there?
I loved living in Helsinki! It might not be one of the most obvious tourist cities, as it doesn´t have the monuments and sights of more famous cities, but the real draw of Helsinki is the quality of life. I would say there are few cities in the world where it is as pleasant to live as in Helsinki. Pretty much regardless of interest, there are things going on. For example, as an active salsa dancer, I loved the Cuban salsa scene in Helsinki and, as a booklover, having one of Europe’s largest bookstore in the city center was amazing.
I was not born in Helsinki; I grew up in a rather small town called Jakobstad, in the Swedish-speaking part of Finland, and moved to Helsinki for my studies.
Your dissertation discussant was Zannie Giraud Voss. Did you start collaborating after your defense (e.g., visit to Boconi)?
I never worked with Zannie, no. She is a great person and scholar, and I still have very fond memories of my dissertation discussion with her.
What is your network of co-authors?
It is rather diverse at the moment. Having gravitated into the luxury service field, I have more managerial co-authors than previously, as I find it very beneficial to work with managers from leading luxury houses. I think we can all agree that managerial insights are a crucial part of good business research. Obviously Jochen (Wirtz) is an important coauthor in my luxury services research, both for already published articles and future projects. I also work on projects with my good friend and colleague Renaud Lunardo; to date, all our common projects ended up in A journals (IJRM, JR) and we have two ongoing projects with which we hope to keep that trend going.
What do you look for when selecting who to work with?
This is like asking what you look for in a date ???? I prefer working with nice people with whom it is fun to work together, and that has been the case for almost all my research projects. My most common co-authors through the years have been Yves van Vaerenbergh, Christian Grönroos, Jochen Wirtz, and Renaud Lunardo. All four of them great to work with, and I hope to work with all four of them for more projects, but in each case it was different circumstances that led us to start working together. So I do not think there is a particular thing I look for when selecting co-authors, apart from good researcher and nice people.
Why Kedge, Bordeaux, France?
It was partly coincidence. I remember that when starting my final year of post-doc studies, I decided to send out one application letter per day, starting the first week of September. On Thursday that week, I had already been invited to interviews to the places I had mailed on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, one of which was Bordeaux École de Management (as the name was then). I still applied to three more and was invited to two of them, so I ended up being interviewed at five business schools in different countries.
Without mentioning names, one interview was in an amazing city where I would have loved to live, but it was made clear during the interview that they wanted a teaching focus and discouraged research. That was not something I would even consider, so I had to turn it down. I also had the opposite, being interviewed at a place with an amazing academic reputation, but unfortunately the city did not appeal to me at all. In Bordeaux, I found a city I really liked combined with colleagues who all gave a nice impression and a strong commitment to research.
What influenced your decision to move?
Having lived my whole life in Finland, apart from two six months periods in Montréal and one in Milan during my studies and post-doc, I wanted to try living abroad. Also, at the time, there were no open positions at Hanken, so it was natural to look for options.
Could you have chosen Canada or Italy?
Canada was definitely an option, with Montréal being the only city where I loved living even more than Helsinki. The week before I was offered the position in Bordeaux, I had in fact been offered a position for an additional post-doc in Montréal and already told all my friends there I was coming back. As you can imagine, it was a bit hard to get back to them all and tell them that I was not going to come…
What is your experience working abroad?
I would say it is 80% great and 20% frustrating, using Finland as a benchmark. I do think it is very beneficial for academics to change their environment. Something I really appreciate is the students at Kedge, and they are a large part of why – despite several job offers elsewhere – I have stayed so long at Kedge already. Also, working in the luxury service field, there are few better places in the world than France and all the collaboration opportunities with both French luxury service providers and luxury maisons interested in designing a service experience to match their image.
Of course there are things I miss from Finland. As much as I enjoy living in France, it is hardly a secret that France can be somewhat bureaucratic. The ease with which administrative tasks are done in Finland is certainly something I still miss, especially every time I need to contact any French governmental agency.
Your research focus now is on Luxury Services (e.g., best paper JOSM, Special Issue JBR). Why?
Just as my research focus on language stemmed from living in Finland, the importance of the luxury industry in France has impacted my focus on luxury. That said, my hometown, Jakobstad, is home to two of the world’s leading luxury yachting brands, Baltic Yachts and Nautor, the only two Nordic luxury brands that are famous even in France. I actually did my Master Thesis on Baltic Yachts, so the luxury focus was not entirely new to me.
Even so, I originally taught service marketing at Kedge for my first years, and it was only in 2015 when Kedge needed someone to teach half a course in luxury that I volunteered. That half-course became so popular that Kedge asked for a full course the next year, then asked to double that course the following year, then asked for two, then three different courses. At the moment, I chair a Luxury Marketing Major of five different courses (Luxury branding, Luxury Experiences, International Luxury Management, Digital Luxury, and – of course – Luxury Services). The Major has become so popular that students tell me the places in it always fill up in the first two minutes of registration each year. Obviously I realize that it is the topic, and not the professor, who attracts the interest, but it still hugely rewarding to teach a topic that students are so interesting in studying.
So… In 2015 and 2016 I taught luxury, alongside services, while still doing most of my research about services and languages. Still, the interest of the students motivated me to start looking into luxury research, from a service perspective, and I was amazed of how little was done (outside of hospitality). Together with Carlos Diaz Ruiz and Lisa Peñaloza, we started to think about what the experience in luxury is, and those reflections ended up becoming my most cited article to date – Moments of Luxury. Then, in a lucky coincidence, Jochen Wirtz attended a conference presentation I did; Jochen had also been reflecting on the lack of luxury service research and we started to discuss together how to fill that gap. Together with Martin Fritze, we wrote the article Luxury Services which JOSM awarded, as well as a few more articles on different aspects of luxury services.
Where is research on the topic/phenomenon going (e.g., sustainability)?
Sustainability has been by far the dominating focus in luxury for some years already, and it is a very important topic. Both of my PhD students are working on sustainability in luxury, and the luxury industry is really engaged in the topic. So sustainable luxury is definitely a topic in which research is increasing a lot.
Then, I am happy to say, luxury service research is really picking up. When I attended my first luxury conference some years ago, I felt I was the only one talking about luxury services. Now, things have changed entirely and the luxury field is taking a very keen interest in services. At the latest luxury conference, a good third of the presentations were about luxury services and experiences, so I definitely see a future for luxury service research.
You’re known for collaborating with industry (e.g., luxury brands). What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing so?
I think industry collaboration is always positive for us. As Mike Brady said at QUIS in 2019, “Marketing is an applied field – deal with it!”. For example, with Christian Kowalkowski we published an article on traceability in luxury in 2023; that research topic largely came from discussions with managers at one the most emblematic luxury fashion houses. They were very interested in traceability, and we noticed how little there was done on the topic. As Jan-Benedict Steenkamp said a few years ago: the best way to find an interesting research gap is to talk to managers to see what information they think is missing.
Which publication are you the proudest of?
Ouch, this is very hard… There are many publications I am proud of, for different reasons. I absolutely must mention the article we did with Yves (Van Vaerenbergh), Renaud (Lunardo) and Micael (Dahlén) in Journal of Retailing on the language backfire effect.
Why?
There are many reasons I am proud of that one: first, it is a topic I really felt strongly about. When first moving to France, I was so annoyed when people would switch to English with me, despite me thinking that my French was already good (with hindsight, after ten years in France, it was not…). So the research question came out of that frustration, and I really think it is a nice topic. I am also proud of how we combine the six students to first identify a key problem, then identify the underlying reason for that problem, and finally finding how to solve that problem.
That said, there are other articles of which I am proud. The most important contribution may be what Carol Azaz and I did in Journal of Business Ethics when we found that speaking with an accent after service failure results in less likelihood to be believed, less likely to be compensated, and less compensation – compared to someone who does not have an accent. Those are depressive findings, but I do feel they are immensely important for showing the discrimination stemming from speaking with an accent.
I also have to mention, again, the article with Carlos and Lisa on Moments of Luxury about the hedonic experience as luxury. We spent so many years being beaten down by reviewers who told us that moments cannot be luxury and at times we just wanted to give up and felt that nobody except us believed in it – yet since being published a little over three years ago, it has already picked up close to 200 citations. So for tenacity we showed during all those years of writing it despite everyone telling us that luxury is goods, not experiences, and then getting the vindication of people showering it with praise once we finally got it accepted – that is something I feel proud of.
If you had not gotten into the academic career track, what would you have done?
I have no idea ???? When I was three, my grandfather said I was sure to become a professor. The same year I started at Hanken, I was also accepted into a program in Celtic Linguistics in the UK. So had I not gone into academia in service research, I probably would have done a PhD in Celtic studies instead.
You are well-spoken on the publishing process in academia (e.g., guest articles on reviewing and journal rankings). What is your role as an ERB member / area editor?
Thank you, that’s kind! My role as ERB member for different journals is rather similar across the field and consists of doing a number of reviews every year.
How does that influence your work?
In all honesty, I don’t think there is a direct influence on my work. That said, the indirect influence is of course important in that I believe we all continuously need to develop and improve as both authors and reviewers, and we mainly learn by doing. Obviously, I have learnt a lot about the revision process both from being an author and from being a reviewer.
How do you see your responsibilities in these positions? (e.g., SI guest editor)
Doing a special issue is always a bit different as you really want to make sure it turns out well but, unlike regular issues, it is also a “numbers game”. You have a lower limit of manuscripts you need to exceed for there to be a special issue, and a higher limit above which you cannot accept manuscripts. Fortunately, we have never had a problem with the lower limit for any of the special issues I have guest edited and certainly never even had to consider accepting a manuscript just to reach that limit.
What do you like the most/least in editing (or reviewing) manuscripts?
What I like the most is when manuscripts improve during the process. When we get reviewer comments back for major revisions, we might at times feel a bit frustrated at all there is to do – but usually those revisions really improve the paper.
As for what I like the least: As someone who has done roughly one third quantitative articles, one third qualitative, and one third conceptual, I must admit that revising qualitative manuscripts is what I like the least. Don’t get me wrong, I think qualitative research is every bit as valuable – but looking back at my published articles, we almost always had an easier time in the revision process with quantitative projects than with qualitative ones. That said, I can also look at my published articles and see that the qualitative and conceptual ones get cited a lot more often than the quantitative ones. In other words, reviewers often give you a harder time in the revision process for the qualitative manuscripts, but once they are published people tend to like them. So I do encourage young researchers to be open to doing qualitative research, but to prepared for a grilling review process.
Students at Kedge love you. What is your secret?
Well, I don’t know if all student love me… I do have the feeling that many of them appreciate me, and of course I am very grateful for that. But there is no real secret: my students are amazing, year and year, and I really enjoy working with them. I can honestly say that the students I have at Kedge are one of the greatest advantages of my work. The quality of the projects they do, both in their class projects and in the Master’s theses, is often outstanding. The same thing applies for the discussion and activity in class – I really feel that students want to come to class and to discuss the topics, and even though I assign them around ten academic articles to read per course, they frequently come to ask me for additional readings.
So yeah, if there’s any secret, it is that: I genuinely love working with my students. When they are so engaged in the topic, and really invest their time and effort into their projects and into discussions in class, of course it inspires me to also do my very best in return. Of course I invest a lot of time into my classes to try to make them as informative and interesting as possible, and I am happy if the students appreciate my efforts – but quality of the courses is in large part thanks to amazing students.
Why is Bordeaux a great place for SERVSIG 2024?
There are lots of reasons! Bordeaux is an amazing city, frequently topping lists for best quality of life in France. I hardly need to mention wine, almost everybody knows that Bordeaux is the wine capital of the world with several of the world’s best wines on our doorstep. Bordeaux also has the world’s largest wine museum, and we are happy to offer all SERVSIG participants a visit of the museum and to finish the conference with a networking cocktail dinner at the wine museum. It is also a food city, with everything from numerous Michelin-starred restaurant through both traditional and modern French cuisine to affordable bistros.
What people might not know is that Bordeaux also has the largest urban area protected by UNESCO in all of Europe. The old city is huge, very well preserved and almost entirely pedestrian. In addition to being picturesque, Bordeaux has tons of great restaurants, cafés and – of course – wine bars.
We both hope and believe that SERVSIG participants will have a great time in Bordeaux, and look forward to welcoming the service community to our city!
Jonas Holmqvist
Associate Professor of Marketing,
Kedge Business School,
Bordeaux, France.
