Bernd Herbert Schmitt is a professor of international business in the marketing department at Columbia Business School, Columbia University in New York. He is known for his research, books, speaking and consulting on customer experience, customer happiness, branding, innovation and for his work in Asia on Asian markets and consumers. He wrote several influential books in these areas like Experiential Marketing, Customer Experience Management, Big Think Strategy and Happy Customers Everywhere.
Schmitt has done research, teaching and consulting in many parts of the world, especially in Asia. From 1996–2000, he was the head of marketing at The China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai and held the first marketing chair ever in China. He has also held visiting appointments and short-term teaching appointments at M.I.T, the University of Michigan, Yonsei University in South Korea, Hong Kong University, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the University of Munich in Germany and Jagiellonian University in Poland.
Life and career
Schmitt was born in Heidelberg, Germany, where he attended high school and the University of Heidelberg, studying psychology. He went to Cornell University as an exchange student and later received a PhD in psychology. He joined Columbia University in 1988 and first taught courses in consumer behavior and advertising management. Later he taught marketing strategy and a popular course in branding. The branding course is also offered every year as a seminar during the Oktoberfest in Munich.
In the 1990s, he became interested in Chinese and Asian markets and consumers. He first visited China in 1991 and taught consumer behavior in Beijing at CEMI, a predecessor of CEIBS. He published articles on Chinese consumers and Chinese market segmentation. He also began his research, with other authors, like Shi Zhang, Yigang Pan, and Nader Tavassoli, on comparing Western and Asian languages. In 1996, he was appointed as the head of the marketing department at CEIBS and held the first marketing chair in China.
In the late 1990s, he began authoring books on customer experience like Experiential Marketing and Customer Experience Management.
From 2000–2010, he spent a sabbatical at the University of Munich, Germany and also taught courses in South Korea and Singapore. He also was a frequent keynote speaker at conferences worldwide. He was featured among the Thinkers 50. He was on the marketing boards of Volkswagen AG and Samsung Electronics USA.
In 2011, he moved to Singapore to become the Executive Director of ACI – a new institute focused on Asian markets and consumers.
Contributions to marketing and management
Schmitt is widely known for his contributions to customer experience, brand management and innovative marketing. Experiential Marketing: How to Get Customers to Sense, Feel, Think, Act and Relate to Your Company and Brands introduced the concept of customer experience to marketing and brand management. Customer Experience Management provides a step-by-step framework for managing experiences. Big Think Strategy has methods and tools for innovative marketing. Happy Customers Everywhere provides management methods to delight customers and make them happy.
He often uses psychological concepts in his writings and applies them to marketing and business. His books have many case studies and also examples from opera and the arts. Experiential Marketing and Customer Experience Management use theories from sensory, cognitive and social psychology. Happy Customers Everywhere is influenced by Positive Psychology.
Schmitt authored and co-authored more than 60 articles in academic marketing, management and psychology journals. He did research on consumer attitudes, innovation and language in cross-cultural contexts (comparing Asian and western languages). His books have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Research and work in Asia
Schmitt has been researching, consulting and lecturing in Asia since 1991. He has written case studies on Asian companies including Korean companies Samsung, Yuan-Kimberly, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra; Mary Kay in Shanghai and various Chinese companies such as Jahwa Corporation, Shanghai Venus Software and Shanghai Petrochemical.
He has held the first marketing chair in China. He has had visiting appointments at HKUST and Hong Kong University, CEIBS in Shanghai, Yonsei University in Seoul (South Korea), and at Singapore Management University.
Schmitt has consulted for Asian companies such as Sony, Sunstar, ADK in Japan; Samsung, Lotte, Amore Pacific, Hanjin in South Korea, Wheelock in Hong Kong and Tata Industries in India.
Schmitt, B. (2012). Happy customers everywhere. How your business can benefit from the insights from positive psychology. New York: Palgrave.
Schmitt, B. (2007). Big think strategy: How to leverage bold ideas and leave small thinking behind. Boston: Harvard Business Press.
Schmitt, B. and Mangold, M. (2004). Kundenerlebnis als Wettbewerbsvorteil: Mit CEM Marken und Märkte gestalten. Wiesbaden: Gabler Verlag.
Schmitt, B. (2003). Customer experience management: A revolutionary approach to connecting with your customers. New York: Wiley.
Schmitt, B., Rogers, D. and Vrotsos, K. (2003). There's no business that's not show business: Marketing in an experience culture. Englewood-Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Financial Times.
Schmitt, B. (2001). Build your own garage: Blueprints and tools to unleash your company's hidden creativity. The Free Press.
Schmitt, B. (1999). Experiential marketing: How to get customers to sense, feel, think, act and relate to your company and brands. New York: The Free Press
Schmitt, B. H. and Simonson, A. (1997). Marketing aesthetics: The strategic management of brands, identity and image. New York: The Free Press.
The Experience Economy is the sale of memorable experiences to customers. The term was first used in a 1998 article by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore describing the next economy following the agrarian economy, the industrial economy, and the most recent service economy. The concept had been previously researched by many authors.
Positioning refers to the place that a brand occupies in the minds of the customers and how it is distinguished from the products of the competitors and different from the concept of brand awareness. In order to position products or brands, companies may emphasize the distinguishing features of their brand or they may try to create a suitable image through the marketing mix. Once a brand has achieved a strong position, it can become difficult to reposition it. To effectively position a brand and create a lasting brand memory, brands need to be able to connect to consumers in an authentic way, creating a brand persona usually helps build this sort of connection.
In marketing, brand management begins with an analysis on how a brand is currently perceived in the market, proceeds to planning how the brand should be perceived if it is to achieve its objectives and continues with ensuring that the brand is perceived as planned and secures its objectives. Developing a good relationship with target markets is essential for brand management. Tangible elements of brand management include the product itself; its look, price, and packaging, etc. The intangible elements are the experiences that the target markets share with the brand, and also the relationships they have with the brand. A brand manager would oversee all aspects of the consumer's brand association as well as relationships with members of the supply chain.
Consumer behavior is the study of individuals, groups, or organizations and all the activities associated with the purchase, use and disposal of goods and services. Consumer behaviour consists of how the consumer's emotions, attitudes, and preferences affect buying behaviour. Consumer behaviour emerged in the 1940–1950s as a distinct sub-discipline of marketing, but has become an interdisciplinary social science that blends elements from psychology, sociology, social anthropology, anthropology, ethnography, ethnology, marketing, and economics.
China Europe International Business School is a business school located in Shanghai, China.
Engagement marketing, sometimes called "experiential marketing", "event marketing", "on-ground marketing", "live marketing", "participation marketing", "Loyalty Marketing", or "special events", is a marketing strategy that directly engages consumers and invites and encourages them to participate in the evolution of a brand or a brand experience. Rather than looking at consumers as passive receivers of messages, engagement marketers believe that consumers should be actively involved in the production and co-creation of marketing programs, developing a relationship with the brand.
John Anthony Quelch CBE is the dean of the University of Miami School of Business at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.
A touchpoint can be defined as any way consumers can interact with a business organization, whether it be person-to-person, through a website, an app or any form of communication. When consumers come in contact with these touchpoints it gives them the opportunity to compare their prior perceptions of the business and form an opinion.
Customer experience (CX) is a totality of cognitive, affective, sensory, and behavioral consumer responses during all stages of the consumption process including pre-purchase, consumption, and post-purchase stages. Nihat Tavşan and Can Erdem bring an extensive elucidation to the customer experience, encompassing the dimensions of consciousness, subjectivity, and interactional nature and define customer experience as the sum of subjective ideas regarding a product or service that occur at a conscious or subconscious level due to direct or indirect interaction of a customer with brand-related stimuli. Pine and Gilmore described the experience economy as the next level after commodities, goods, and services with memorable events as the final business product. Four realms of experience include esthetic, escapist, entertainment, and educational components. Tavşan and Erdem divided the customer experience into four categories based on the levels of cognitive and physical involvement of customers. These four categories are euphoric experiences, captive experiences, mellowing experiences, and conductive experiences.
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and store value as brand equity for the object identified, to the benefit of the brand's customers, its owners and shareholders. Brand names are sometimes distinguished from generic or store brands.
Jerry Kathman is President and Chief Executive Officer of LPK, the largest independent brand design agency in the world with offices in North America, Europe and Asia. Kathman is recognized within the industry as a leading authority on the role of design in brand building. His global experience has provided Fortune 500 companies with insights into both the opportunities and pitfalls of taking a brand beyond national boundaries.
Experience management is an effort by organizations to measure and improve the experiences they provide to customers as well as stakeholders like vendors, suppliers, employees, and shareholders. The concept posits the notion that experiences comprise distinct economic offerings that create economic value and competitive advantage.
Experiential interior design (EID) is the practice of employing experiential or phenomenological values in interior experience design. EID is a human-centered design approach to interior architecture based on modern environmental psychology emphasizing human experiential needs. The notion of EID emphasizes the influence of the designed environments on human total experiences including sensorial, cognitive, emotional, social, and behavioral experiences triggered by environmental cues. One of the key promises of EID is to offer values beyond the functional or mechanical experiences afforded by the environment.
Sensory branding is a type of marketing that appeals to all the senses in relation to the brand. It uses the senses to relate with customers on an emotional level. It is believed that the difference between an ordinary product and a captivating product is emotion. When emotion flows in the marketplace, your product shines. When there is no emotion from the product, customers lack the enthusiasm and passion that launches a product to success. Brands can forge emotional associations in the customers' minds by appealing to their senses. A multi-sensory brand experience generates certain beliefs, feelings, thoughts and opinions to create a brandgon image in the consumer's mind.
Deepak Ohri is an author, entrepreneur, business leader, public speaker, lecturer, and mentor.
Amitava Chattopadhyay is The GlaxoSmithKline Chaired Professor in Corporate Innovation — Professor of Marketing at INSEAD, Fellow of the Institute on Asian Consumer Insights, and Senior Fellow at the Ernst & Young Institute for Emerging Market Studies.
Massification is a strategy that some luxury companies use in order to attain growth in the sales of product. Some luxury brands have taken and used the concept of massification to allow their brands to grow to accommodate a broader market. As a method of implementing massification, companies have created diffusion lines. Diffusion lines are an offshoot of a company or a designers original line that is less expensive in order to reach a broader market and gain a wider consumer base. Another strategy used in massification is brand extensions, which is when an already established company releases a new product under their name.
Shopee Pte. Ltd. (Shopee) is a Singaporean multinational technology company that specialises in e-commerce. The company was launched in Singapore in 2015, before it expanded abroad.
Martin Roll is a Danish author, brand strategist and management consultant. Roll appears regularly in global television and print media. He holds an MBA from INSEAD where he is a Distinguished Fellow and an Entrepreneur in Residence. Roll's first book, Asian Brand Strategy, was named one of the "Best Business Books: Marketing" in 2006 by Strategy+Business magazine. He is the founder CEO of Martin Roll Company, an advisory firm based in Singapore. He advises Fortune 500 companies, Asian firms, family-owned businesses and also served as a senior advisor to McKinsey & Company.
Cassie Mogilner Holmes is a professor of marketing and behavioral decision making at UCLA Anderson School of Management and author of Happier Hour. Best known for her research on time and happiness..
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