CERS is a research- and competence centre at the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki

Helsinki

Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...

, Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

. The centre operates in conjunction with the department of marketing, and specialises in research on service management

Service management

Service management is integrated into supply chain management as the joint between the actual sales and the customer. The aim of high performance service management is to optimize the service-intensive supply chains, which are usually more complex than the typical finished-goods supply chain...

 and relationship marketing

Relationship marketing

Relationship marketing was first defined as a form of marketing developed from direct response marketing campaigns which emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction, rather than a dominant focus on sales transactions....

. There are currently 13 senior researchers and 35 doctoral students associated to CERS, of which one third are acting as full time researchers. The centre is a part of the Helsinki Business Campus

History

CERS was founded in 1994 by professor Christian Grönroos and set up in cooperation with professors Martin Lindell, Sören Kock, Tore Strandvik and Kaj Storbacka. The centre was founded to do frontline academic research on relationship marketing and service management and to uphold the research traditions of the Nordic School of marketing.

Activity

33 doctoral theses have been defended and published at CERS, along with a number of academic articles. According to the Finnish Journal of Business Economics (1/2007), CERS founder Christian Grönroos is the most cited business professor in Finland, with CERS professors Veronica Liljander and Tore Strandvik among the top 15. CERS maintains an active co-operation with the business community and arranges workshops for its partner companies. It also organizes the annual CERS Award–competition for excellence in relationship marketing.

External links

• Hanken - Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration
• CERS - Centre for Relationship Marketing and Service Management
• Helsinki Business Campus