Guest article by Dhruv Grewal, Christopher Lovelock Career Contributions to the Service Disciple Award Recipient 2024.
Once more, let me express my sincere appreciation to the AMA ServSig for this wonderful award—the 2024 Christopher Lovelock Career Contributions to the Service Disciple Award. I thought long and hard about which of the issues and lessons learned over my long career that I really wanted to share with you. Ultimately, I decided to focus on those research areas that have been my greatest passions for more than 30 years, along with reflecting on relevant lessons that might be useful for doctoral students and junior faculty, just starting out in their careers.
The talk I presented at the Frontiers Conference —expertly organized by Florida State University at Amelia Island—was titled “A Journey of Intellectual Curiosity –But Why?” I have always felt that this metaphorical journey represents the cornerstone of my academic career. It has revolved around being intellectually curious and seeking answers for questions that intrigued me, at that given time. As a result, I have focused on multiple domains in my ongoing pursuit of answers. Some of them involve pricing (going back to my early dissertation days) and retailing, as well as services marketing and, more recently, technology. My current research is strongly focused on understanding the role of technology and AI in particular, so I want to share some thoughts about these related domains.

Store and Service Technology: In the past two decades, I have examined a wide variety of technologies, deployed in different store and service settings, such as digital displays, robot associates, mobile technology, self-checkout scanners, augmented employees, self-checkout stores, and so forth. Typically when I undertake to explore these domains, I adopt a multimethod approach, combining field data (secondary data and/or field experiments) with experiments. Several of my projects also have benefited immensely from interviews with relevant experts and stakeholders. It is extremely meaningful for academics to continue to reach out to and interact with various stakeholders, to ensure that our research remains relevant and reflective of what is actually happening in the current marketing practice.
In a recent paper, my coauthors and I propose classifying store and service technologies along two axes: (1) whether they are more customer or more employee focused and (2) whether the technology outcome is oriented more toward efficiency or enhancement. With this matrix, as depicted on the following page, it is possible to elucidate how and why technology gets deployed in retailing and service settings. It also helps showcase critical important research avenues that demand further exploration.

AI, Generative AI, and Agentic AI. Within AI domains, researchers are starting to embrace and address a host of questions, using different techniques, foundations, and conceptualizations. One such question involves the distinctions among traditional AI (analytically oriented), generative AI (text, images, video), and the emerging area of agentic AI. Work in this domain can help shed light on both the positive promises and the negative potential threats of AI. Furthermore, understanding these aspects requires considerations at various stakeholder levels, including individuals (customer vs. employees), firms, and society. My research focuses especially on the roles of robots, augmented employees, and AI, such as in a recent article, in which my coauthors and I provide insights about how best to think about deploying generative AI. As we propose, these perspectives might be contingent on the type of input data (generic vs. custom) or the way the output will be deployed (with or without human augmentation or intervention). Other important research questions remain to be addressed by researchers, including how people react to content generated by humans versus AI.
Four Suggestions, from an Experienced Researcher to Younger Colleagues:
1. Work on Topics that Spark Your Intellectual Curiosity. Researching topics of great interest, that prompt passion in the researcher, feeds the research process. Scientific research and publishing can take years, from starting the project to ultimately sharing it in published journal articles. For young researchers, I emphasize: find topics that interest you, because that is nearly the only way sustain the drive needed to take your ideas from initial questions to ultimate publications.
2. Work with Compatible Colleagues. Compatible colleagues are those who are also vested in answering the focal questions. They can improve the research project, especially by bringing their unique (substantive, methodological, and conceptual) skill sets to the table. Ensuring a diversity of skills can make the research project more robust and the discussions more enlightening. I am constantly learning from my interactions with my colleagues and coauthors. It is truly a wonderful part of an academic career—the continual learning, such that we get to be students forever. I cannot overstate my appreciation for all the colleagues (and friends) with whom I have had the great fortune to work (and learn from). They also have provided me with wonderful opportunities to mentor junior faculty and doctoral students. It is truly gratifying to see them flourish in academics and industry.
3. Work Hard and Also Work Smart. Rigorous academic research takes time. You must make the time to get your work done. I could never have done so without the support of my family and friends. You have to learn to recharge yourself. Each of us finds different ways to reenergize and reinvigorate; for me, it usually involves long walks, reading fiction, travel, and watching movies. Working smart also means working in domains that interest you, working with compatible colleagues, and continually developing and acquiring new skills.
4. Disseminate Your Knowledge. Take a smart and strategic approach to ensure that you share and disseminate the insights you learn from your research projects. This strategy might involve traditional journal publications, but it also should include presenting at conferences and camps, writing books, talking to reporters, and presenting at industry forums. All these venues offer insights and rewards, in their own way, both for audiences who gain exposure to the novel ideas that we research, and for us as researchers.
I hope you find this reflection interesting, and I wish all of you the best in your ongoing, fruitful pursuits of answers to interesting questions.
Dhruv Grewal
Toyota Professor of Commerce and Electronic Business
Babson College