Professor Tom Chen

Tom Chen is a Professor of Marketing and serves as the Director of Studies for MBA programmes at Kent Business School. Until 2024, he also held an honorary position at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University.

Tom earned his PhD from Queensland University of Technology in 2011. Recognised as 'Australia’s Research Field Leader in Marketing 2020' by The Australian, Tom is also the co-founder of the Co-creation in Service and Customer Engagement (CCIS-CE) Symposium and the Sharing Smart Cities Consortium. 

Tom has published extensively in prestigious journals including the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Service Management, Journal of Service Theory and Practice, and Journal of Services Marketing, among others.  

He currently serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Services Marketing and the Journal of Social Impact in Business Research, and sits on the editorial boards of several journals including the Journal of Service Theory and Practice and the Service Industries Journal. He is also a board member of the American Marketing Association’s SERVSIG. Based on his expertise in co-creation, he also serves as an external advisor to the EU Horizon Improva project, a mental health platform for adolescents. 

Tom's research focuses on service research, marketing theory, and strategies for co-creation and engagement. His current work explores a range of topics, including sharing in smart cities, transdisciplinary collaboration, well-being co-creation, customer-initiation of value co-creation, psychological ownership among co-creative consumers, and customer and stakeholder engagement. He places particular emphasis on disruptive service systems, such as smart cities, platform economies, healthcare service delivery, digital health platforms, and mental health engagement frameworks.   

Leveraging his extensive research and practical experience, Tom specialises in teaching service management and marketing strategies, employing case-based and collaborative learning methods.