Online surprise gift-giving services and well-being: sender and recipient perspectives

Rachael Millard is a visiting scholar at Westminster Business School at the University of Westminster, London, UK and an external member of the Service Research and Customer Experience Group. Rachael’s research interests predominantly center around the experience of emotions in marketing, with particular focus on the consumer experience of surprise. She is also interested in social marketing and behavior change. Rachael has presented at several international marketing conferences and now uses her work in industry to inform her research focus. Her research has been published in academic journals such as Psychology and Marketing and Marketing Theory, among others.

Tana Cristina Licsandru is a senior lecturer (associate professor) in marketing in the School of Business and Management at Queen Mary University of London, UK. Tana’s main research interests lie in the broad area of transformative consumer research, with particular focus on consumer diversity, inclusion and well-being in multicultural marketplaces. Current research topics include marketplace discrimination and stigma; and vulnerable consumer groups (e.g. immigrants and racialized minorities); as well as inclusive design, broadly applied (e.g. in services and branding, but also education). Her research has appeared in the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, Journal of Business Research, International Marketing Review, among others and has been presented at various international conferences.

Danae Manika (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) is a professor of marketing at Brunel Business School and the acting executive dean of the College of Business, Arts and Social Sciences at Brunel University. She also leads the Behavioral Science Insights for Sustainability Lab within the Center for Entrepreneurship and Sustainability at Brunel University. Danae’s research profile includes sustained publications (e.g. Journal of Service Research, Journal of Business Ethics, Tourism Management, Technological forecasting and Social Change) across several years on effective message construction for behavior change within health, environmental and well-being contexts; while her research has been supported by £364,000+ of funding (e.g. CRUK, EPSRC/Innovate UK, NERC/NCAS, RED and Arrow/ERDF). Danae has also been involved in various consultancies (e.g. Harrow Council, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council, RECOUP, Global Action Plan), with the aim of linking theory to practice (impact). She is the Section Editor for the Journal of Business Ethics (section: Marketing Ethics), which is a Financial Times 50 journal and the Associate Editor (AE) for Business and Society; and sits on the Editorial Review Boards of top journals.

Diana Gregory-Smith is a professor of marketing and sustainability at Newcastle University Business School, UK. Diana’s research focuses on ethical and sustainable behavior applied to a range of contexts such as marketing and consumption, health, workplace settings, technology adoption and tourism. Her interdisciplinary work has been published in journals such as Journal of Business Ethics, European Management Review, Psychology and Marketing, European Journal of Marketing, Annals of Tourism Research and Tourism Management. Diana’s research involving industry collaborators has been funded by ESRC, UK Government (North of Tyne Combined Authority), OFWAT, OFGEM, Procter and Gamble, ERDF-Arrow, EPSRC (IAA) and the British Psychological Society. Diana is an associate editor for the Journal of Marketing Management, Business and Society Review and Frontiers in Sustainability and she is on the Editorial Board for the British Journal of Management and Journal of Sustainable Tourism.