How did you become interested in your field of research?
I was working with Lufthansa Technik in a new division that develops IT solutions. In the conservative B2B world, digital solutions require a new kind of Sales and Marketing which presented us with many issues in practice. Researching the integration of IT into Sales and Marketing and its acceptance motivated me to gain new insights for scholars which are also applicable in practice.
I am very grateful that Lufthansa Technik supported me in investing my time in a research topic for which I was intrinsically motivated. This allowed us to create a very strong connection between Lufthansa Technik, HSBA and the University of Twente, from management experience to scientific rigor.
What is the focus of your PhD?
The focus is the alignment between Marketing, Sales and IT actors in terms of customer interactions. The framework of the ‚customer journey‘ was used to discover how much responsibility is shared between the actors.
What are the main findings of your PhD?
The Digital Transformation of Marketing and Sales is not yet over and the responsibilities for customer interactions vary dynamically along the customer journey. This contributes to the discussion of Sales Portfolios and buyer-seller relationships. For managers, it shows that they need to integrate IT to design customer interaction touchpoints and integrate IT actors into customer communication and manage the alignment between these actors.
Are there any results or discoveries you are particularly surprised of?
In some stages of the customer journey, the responsibility of IT actors is even higher in custo interactions than the perceived responsibility of Marketing actors.
I‘d like to mention once more the professional and high quality setup of the University of Twente as a partner university and like to thank Prof. Susanne Hensel-Börner (HSBA) and Prof. Jörg Henseler (UTwente) for their personal support, guidance and supervision as well as Frank Martens (Lufthansa Technik) for professional support and opening the doors. This work would not have been possible without you!
