Life and Career
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.
In the late 1990s, he began authoring books on customer experience like Experiential Marketing and Customer Experience Management.
In 1999, he became the director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership at Columbia Business School, which runs the annual Brite conference.
From 2000-2010, he spent a sabbatical at the University of Munich, Germany and also taught courses in South Korea and Singapore. He also was a frequent keynote speaker at conferences worldwide. He was features among the Thinkers 50. He was on the marketing boards of Volkswagen AG and Samsung Electronics USA.
In 2011, he moved to Singapore to become the Executive Director of ACI – a new institute focused on Asian markets and consumers.
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