Christian Grönroos is the recipient of the 2025 Don Schultz award for Innovation in Teaching, Theory and Practice of Integrated Marketing Communications.
Grönroos is a pioneering scholar in the field of marketing. He has developed an area of marketing scholarship known as service-dominant logic that closely parallels the approach of integrated marketing communications in prioritizing customer service and customer experience.
His articles are some of the most cited papers on IMC, and have advanced IMC thinking substantially.
“We are delighted to recognize Christian’s groundbreaking contributions to the marketing field,” said Medill Dean Charles Whitaker. “He is among the very best scholars in marketing in Europe, and thus, a worthy recipient of the Don Schultz Award which honors innovation.”
Grönroos is professor emeritus of service and relationship marketing at Hanken School of Economics, Finland. Besides his interest in service marketing and related areas, such as relationship marketing, service quality, and internal marketing, he has worked on new strategies for marketing and marketing communication.
In the context of marketing communication, he has particularly emphasized the role and power of customers. He has also advocated that integrated marketing communication must adhere to the numerous means of communication to become effective and not remain within a conventional range of communication channels.
He has published several books, translated to eight languages, and published extensively in scientific journals such as the Journal of Academy of Marketing Science, European Journal of Marketing, Australasian Journal of Marketing, Marketing Theory, Journal of Industrial & Business Marketing, Management Decision, Journal of Services Marketing, Journal of Service Management, and Journal of Service Theory and Practice, and in several other popular journals.
In 1999, he received American Marketing Association’s Servsig Career Award for his contribution to the service field and in 2013 he was elected Legend in Marketing by the Sheth Foundation.
Medill’s Schultz award is named for long-time Medill Professor Don Schultz who played a pivotal role in creating the field of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) and establishing the IMC department at Medill in the early 1990s. Medill was the first school to offer a graduate degree in Integrated Marketing Communications in the United States. Schultz is regarded internationally as the “father of IMC.” He died in 2020.
Grönroos will give a presentation to Medill faculty this spring and accept his award.
