Bernd Schmitt

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 and 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.

He holds a PhD in Psychology from Cornell University and joined Columbia in 1988. In 2011, he also became the Executive Director of the Institute on Asian Consumer Insight (ACI) in Singapore, funded by the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

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.

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.

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