Christian Grönroos is EMERITUS Professor of Service and Relationship Marketing (from 1999, RETIRING 2014; prior to that, he was Professor of International and Industrial Marketing from 1984 to 1999) at Hanken School of Economics, Finland (Svenska Handelshögskolan) and Initiator and Past Chair of the Board of the research and knowledge center, Centre for Relationship Marketing and Service Management (CERS), of this business university. He is Honorary Professor at Nankai University and Tianjin Normal University, People’s Republic of China and at Oslo School of Management, Norway. From 2002 to 2007, he served as Guest Professor of Service Management at Lund University (Campus Helsingborg), Sweden. HE HOLDS A HONORARY DOCORATE AT ÅBO AKADEMI UNIVERSITY, FINLAND. In 1988 and 1992 he was Visiting Professor at Arizona State University, USA, where its centre for services marketing (now Centre for Service Leadership) was pioneering research in this field. He has also been a scholar at several universities world wide. He is a pioneer and leading scholar developing modern service marketing and service logic as well as relationship marketing and customer relationship management, and one of the earliest proponents of the term service management to describe customer- or market-oriented management based on a service logic in service and manufacturing firms. He is one of the fathers of the School of Service Marketing and Management that has been internationally labeled The Nordic School of thought. CURRENTLY HE IS DEVOTED TO ANALYZING HOW MARKETING COULD BE REFORMED AS A DISCIPLINE AND PRACTICE. He is CSL Distinguished Faculty at Center for Services Leadership, Arizona State University, USA and International Fellow at Service Research Center (Centrum för tjänsteforskning), Karlstad University, Sweden. In Finland, he is scholarly affiliated (docent) with Åbo Academy University, Helsinki University of Technology (now part of Aalto University) and University of Tampere. He is also an honorary member of the Italian Marketing Association and a guest professor at Marketing Research Center of China. He is a distinguished member of the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters and WAS a member of the board of the society FROM 2008 TO 2014. HIS academic administrative positions WERE member and chair of the University Council as well as member of the Academic Council of Hanken School of Economics, Finland. He has published extensively in several languages on service marketing and management and relationship marketing issues as well as on contemporary views on marketing theory, HIS MOST RECENT SCHOLARLY ARTICLES ARE ON THE NEED OF REFORMING MARKETING AS A DISCIPLINE AND PRACTICE. His most recent books on the service and relationship perspective in business are Service Management and Marketing; Customer Management in Service Competition (2015) and In Search of a New Logic for Marketing—Foundations of Contemporary Theory (2007).
In 2012, he was elected one of the most influential professors for the business community in Finland. In a study of the academic impact of scholars who had published in the top-tier Journal of Business Research in 2000, one of his articles (“Relationship Approach to Marketing in Service Contexts: The Marketing and Organizational Behavior Interface,” Journal of Business Research, Vol. 20, No. 1, 1990: 3–11) came out as the one with the highest impact. In a citation index study from 1994 comparing Finnish scholars in business administration with those in sociology, political science, and public law, Christian Grönroos was internationally by far the most cited scholar in business administration, and in terms of citations, on the same level as the most prominent scholars in sociology and political science in Finland (the reference disciplines in the study). Quoting from the study, “In business administration Grönroos comes first, then no one, then no one, and then the rest.” His article “From Marketing Mix to Relationship Marketing: Towards a Paradigm Shift in Marketing” (Management Decision, Vol. 32, No. 2, 1994: 4–20; lead article; Award for Literary Excellence, 1994) is still the most downloaded article of all scientific articles published in an Emerald journal.
In 2003, he was awarded the most prestigious prize for scholarly achievements of the Finnish Society for Sciences and Letters (The Professor E. J. Nyström’s Prize). In 1999, he received the American Marketing Association’s Services Special Interest Group (SERVSIG) Career Contributions to Services Discipline Award, as the first scholar ever from outside North America to receive this award. HE HAS ALSO BEEN AWARDED THE EVERT GUMMESSON AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING SERVICE RESEARCH. In 2002 he was awarded the Pro Oeconomia Prize for the best business book published in Finland. In Scandinavia he has been awarded for his service management research: The Ahlsell Award for outstanding research into marketing and distribution, and the Erik Kempe Award for his textbooks on service management
and marketing. From 1999 to 2008 he served as the chair of the jury for the CERS Award for Excellence in Relationship Marketing and Management. From 2008 to 2011 he served as a member of the jury for the Finnish Quality Award.
In addition to his academic career he frequently lectures on service management and marketing and service business logic as well as customer relationship management and relationship marketing in university-level executive programs as well as in in-house seminars in service and manufacturing firms in Europe, North America (USA), Latin America (Brazil), Asia (China, Singapore, and Thailand), Africa (South Africa), and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand).
His family consists of his wife Viveca Ramstedt, two children from a previous marriage, and four grandchildren.
