Meet Arne De Keyser, a Professor of marketing and a framework-builder for better customer experiences

It might seem logical today, but Arne didn’t plan for an academic life. The first in his family to enter university studies, he chose applied economics for its breadth and discovered research along the way.

“When I first entered university, I had no idea what to expect—and certainly had no awareness of the research going on there,” he says with a laugh. A strong connection with his master’s project supervisor nudged him toward a doctorate at Ghent University, where his doctoral thesis—Understanding and Managing the Customer Experience—was presented in 2015 (1).

He joined EDHEC Business School the same year and, in 2023, became a Full Professor of Marketing. He cites “research freedom” as a key criterion, and found the match he wanted at EDHEC: room to explore coupled with a clear ambition for research. 

“Having the time and freedom to investigate consumer phenomena is an immense privilege,” he notes, “and one I don’t take for granted.” To him, academia is a space where discovery remains central: a place to deepen our understanding of complex phenomena, to communicate those insights clearly, work together as a team to move a research field forward, and to mentor the new generations who join it.

Early on, he adopted a straightforward three-rule filter for project selection: the work must be relevant to managers, it needs to hold long-term potential for impact, and most importantly the co-authors need to be capable and enjoyable to work with. Projects that meet all three conditions stand a much higher chance of moving forward.

Ask him what marketing academia contributes, and the answer is rather inspiring. “Fundamentally, it’s a space that allows you to step back, reflect, and see the broader patterns behind what’s happening in society,” he says. The job, as he frames it, is to separate noise from structure, the wheat from the chaff, to “decouple real, impactful change from novelty.” 

That principle supports his work on customer experience, frontline service technology, and, more recently, circular services. All areas where definitions were (or still are) fuzzy, stakes real, and durable concepts can help organizations act or make sense of their environment.

One of his central research papers (2), which was adopted by a U.S.-based marketing agency to help guide their practice, focused on the development of a language system to discuss customer experience.

Frontline technologies are another focus in his work. Here, he refuses to chase the newest feature for the sake of novelty. “With new tech, I try to calm down and ask: is something fundamentally changing?” he says. The voice-assistant wave offers a clear illustration here. He deliberately sat out the first craze a few years back—“it didn’t really work then”—but has recently returned to the topic, now that the technology is maturing and there’s a real space for AI voice to be impactful. And again, here, the first focus was to clarify what AI voice actually entails. That meant going back to the fundamentals of voice in general and treating it as an object with verbal (diction, syntax, semantics) and paraverbal properties (pitch, volume, pronunciation, …) (3). “Only from such clear conceptual grounds can truly impactful empirical work start,” he states.

“Similarly, we worked on a project to integrate widespread perspectives on circular economy engagement,” he says. “A lot of very cool and relevant research insights existed, but they were all very loosely connected. We worked on bringing these together in an overall circular economy engagement framework (4). My co-authors at Ghent University are now applying this framework in the context of the Green Deal ‘Renting and Sharing’, supported by the Flemish government and involving over 100 organizations that can benefit from our insights and build on them.” This work was also picked up by the European Business Review (5).

Typical of his approach: understanding the conceptual building blocks first and then consider how to move forward empirically. “Conceptual frameworks are a first step. Empirical work then follows,” he says. 

In one of his latest empirical papers in the customer experience space, he looked at how the presentation of quantitative scores affects judgments on platforms like Uber and Amazon (6). “This paper also got featured by Harvard Business Review, which signified the relevance of what we were doing.” (7)

He says ideas usually pop up in everyday encounters, as a consumer observing other consumers and living through his own consumption experiences. The store visit that turns into a hypothesis. The service experience that raises a why. The frontline interaction which surprises positively or negatively. “There are so many interesting questions floating around,” he says. What matters is catching the right ones, to sketch a structure, and to decide when a question deserves research attention. That is where the three rules help his scholarship: to build durable frameworks others can use and build upon.

His EDHEC chapter, now in its eleventh year, is a collective story rather than a solo flight. When he arrived in 2015, the marketing department was relatively small but increasingly leaning into research. He points to the role of Michael Antioco—then Head of Faculty for Marketing, now Dean of Faculty and Research—whose vision gave direction and room to grow. 

Further shaped and steered by his current Head of Faculty, Marie-Cécile Cervellon, he describes a department that has “grown a lot”, sharpened its research focus, and seen output rise. An environment that’s “fun to be in and where I hope to continue growing and learning alongside my colleagues”.

His view of higher education as well as his role as an educator mostly rely on a pragmatic approach rooted in usefulness and energy. “Education is about forming a person—how they cope in this world, how they adapt, how they learn, how they pick up new skills and knowledge,” he says. The aim is to build resilience and judgment so that new challenges that come on someone’s pathway are easier to handle. 

For him, that means bringing research close to the classroom: framing problems clearly, asking students to test ideas in real settings, and making sure they can tell a short-lived fashion from a structural shift. He is candid about the research-teaching balance—trying to give 100% to both can be equally energizing and draining—but there is a definite sense of enjoyment there: the rewarding work of threading a concept from paper to practice and watching students pick it up. 

“Seeing someone grow in understanding a topic, having a student reach out a few years later and telling how something they’ve learned is really useful in their job, and hearing you helped make a difference for someone… that is a really satisfying and rewarding part of this job. And that is what gives energy to keep going on a daily basis.”

Key dates

July 2025: Awarded the Emerging Scholar Award by the Service Special Interest Group of the American Marketing Association (SERVSIG)

Since 2023: Full Professor of Marketing, EDHEC Business School

2020-2023: Associate Professor of Marketing, EDHEC Business School

2015-2020: Assistant Professor of Marketing, EDHEC Business School

2010-2015: PhD in Applied Economics (Marketing), Ghent University, Belgium

To know more about Arne De Keyser

• Visit his personal page on edhec.edu
• Go to his Google Scholar profile
• See his Linkedin profile

References

(1) Understanding and managing the customer experience (2015), Arne De Keyser (UGent) - https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/6901558

(2) De Keyser, A. (2020). “Moving the Customer Experience Field Forward: Introducing the Touchpoints, Context, Qualities (TCQ) Framework,” Journal of Service Research, 23(4), 433-455 - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1094670520928390

(3) Henkens, B., Schultz, C. D., De Keyser, A., and Mahr, D. (2025). “The Sound of Progress: AI Voice Agents in Service,” Journal of Service Management, forthcoming - https://www.emerald.com/josm/article/doi/10.1108/JOSM-06-2025-0269/1279036/The-sound-of-progress-AI-voice-agents-in-service

(4) Verleye, K., De Keyser, A., Raassens, N., Alblas, A. A., Lit, F. C., and Huijben, J. C. C. M. (2024). Pushing Forward the Transition to a Circular Economy by Adopting an Actor Engagement Lens, Journal of Service Research, 27(1), 69-88 - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10946705231175937

Transitioning to a Circular Economy: Adopting an Actor Engagement Lens (2023) EDHEC Vox, Arne De Keyser - https://www.edhec.edu/en/research-and-faculty/edhec-vox/transitioning-circular-economy-adopting-actor-engagement-lens

(5) De Keyser, A., Verleye, K., Raassens, N., and Alblas, A. A. (2024). « Engaging Stakeholders for Circular Economy Success," The European Business Review - https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-31937-2_3 & https://www.europeanbusinessreview.com/engaging-stakeholders-for-circular-economy-success/

(6) Lembregts, C., Schepers, J. L., and De Keyser, A. (2024). “Is it as Bad as it Looks? Judgements of Quantitative Scores Depend on their Presentation Format,” Journal of Marketing Research, 61(5), 937–954 - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00222437231193343

Navigating the Digital Landscape: The Power and Perils of Online Reviews (2023) EDHEC Vox, Arne De Keyser, Ivan Gordeliy, Martin Wetzels - https://www.edhec.edu/en/research-and-faculty/edhec-vox/navigating-digital-landscape-power-and-perils-online-reviews-de-keyser-gordeliy-wetzels

(7) De Keyser, A., Lembregts, C., and Schepers J. L. (2024). "How Rating Systems Shape User Behavior in the Gig Economy," Harvard Business Review. (https://hbr.org/2024/04/research-how-ratings-systems-shape-user-behavior-in-the-gig-economy)