Mary Jo Bitner is the Executive Director of the Center for Services Leadership, Edward M. Carson Chair in Service Marketing, and Professor of Marketing at the W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University (ASU). In her more than 25-year career as a professor and researcher, Dr. Bitner has been recognized as one of the pioneers in the field of service marketing and management worldwide. At ASU she was a founding faculty member of the Center for Services Leadership and has been a leader in its emergence as a premier university-based center for the study of services marketing and management. She also served on the Board of the American Marketing Association (AMA) (2011-2014) and as the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Service Research (2013-2017).Dr. Bitner is co-author of a leading textbook in services: Services Marketing: Integrating Customer Focus Across the Firm, McGraw-Hill, 7th edition, 2017. The book is used at the undergraduate and graduate levels at universities around the world, and has been translated into more than eight different languages. Dr. Bitner led the development of the W. P. Carey MBA marketing and service leadership specialization, a unique full-year focus within the nationally ranked W. P. Carey MBA. Alumni of this ongoing program work in companies worldwide, leading the implementation of service and customer-focused strategies.
In 2003, Dr. Bitner was awarded the Career Contributions to the Service Discipline Award presented by the American Marketing Association. She was also named an IBM Faculty Fellow and received the inaugural ISSIP Fellow Award for Lifetime Achievement in Service Science, from the International Society for Service Innovation Professionals in 2013. At ASU, Dr. Bitner has received the W. P. Carey School of Business Graduate Teaching Excellence Award and the award for Outstanding Professor, PhD Programs. She served as a Distinguished Faculty member at Fudan University, Shanghai, China and taught for many years in ASU’s EMBA program in China.Dr. Bitner’s current research is concerned with service infusion strategies in goods-dominant companies and the strategic roles of technology and contact employees in shaping customer experiences in service contexts. She has published articles relevant to service marketing and management in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Sloan Management Review, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Service Management, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and others. She holds a BA in Political Science and MBA and PhD degrees in Marketing, all from the University of Washington, Seattle.

Thomas Hollmann is a Clinical Associate Professor of Marketing and the Executive Director of the Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State University. Thomas’ work experience spans four countries and over 10 years in Fortune 100 companies, including Black & Decker, Xerox, and as an executive at Sun Life Financial. His research interests include Services Science, with a focus on B2B, service analytics, and Relationship Marketing, with a particular interest in relationship outcomes (profitability, customer equity, defection, retention, satisfaction, etc.). His research has appeared in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing and several leading marketing and services conferences. He has received research grants and awards from the Center for Innovation Management Studies, Xerox, IBM, and the Center for Services Leadership. Thomas has consulted with a range of Fortune 500 firms and he received awards for his teaching at Arizona State University and at NC State. Thomas earned a Ph.D. in Marketing from Arizona State University.

Douglas Olsen, B.Sc., MBA, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Marketing in W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University and Coordinator of the Strategic Marketing and Services Leadership Specialization. Douglas has been active in both graduate and undergraduate programs and teaches marketing strategy, research methodology and marketing communication. He has been an instructor in a broad range of executive development programs related to business strategy and service excellence. He currently serves as Faculty Director of the Service Leadership Institute, held annually at the Center for Service Leadership at ASU, and the Faculty Director of the Strategic Marketing and Services Leadership (SMSL) Specialization in the W. P. Carey MBA Program. Over the past two decades, his dedication to teaching has been recognized with numerous awards for instructional excellence. On a pragmatic level, Douglas has been actively involved in consultation to both government and private enterprise.

Current academic work focuses on factors limiting and enhancing the success of innovation and technology commercialization, as is focused on in his recent book, The Five Laws of Innovation Success: Generating Critical Momentum for Products, Services and Ideas. His academic research has been published in journals that include: Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, Journal of Consumer Psychology an International Journal of Research in Marketing. His research has been presented at over 30 conferences in Canada, the United States, Europe, South America and Australia.

On a personal side, Douglas is fascinated by contemporary design, and enjoys traveling, furniture making, browsing eBay for “really cool old stuff” and spending time outdoors. He may be contacted via email at douglas.olsen@asu.edu or by phone (480) 965-6157.