From the Early Internet to AI, Marketing Professor Cited for Expertise in How Firms Adapt to the Modern Age

Four Chico State faculty members are being celebrated as recipients of the University’s Professional Achievement Honors, which recognize exemplary teacher-scholar achievement on our campus. Honorees are selected by the University’s Faculty Recognition and Support Committee and sponsored by the University Foundation Board of Governors.

To say Matthew Meuter is well-known in his field would be an understatement. His work has been cited in 11,037 journal articles—and counting—and he’s been published twice in the extremely selective Journal of Marketing. Through his expertise and ongoing scholarly work, he elevates the research profile of the College of Business.

One article, “Encouraging Existing Customers to Switch to Self-Service Technologies: Put a Little Fun in Their Lives,” in the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, won an award in 2015 and was at one time the ninth-most cited article in the journal in 10 years. Other recent work has focused on the exploration of comfort brands and lessons from the internet revolution, where he connected “lessons learned” from firms navigating the growth of the internet from 2000–07 to companies grappling with adapting as they emerged from COVID-19. An upcoming piece focuses on the influence and mitigation of bad apples on group dynamics, and another will speak to untrustworthiness in student teams, using a cross-cultural comparison between different thinking cultures.

As someone whose research started nearly 30 years ago focused on firms adapting to new technologies amid an ever-expanding internet, Meuter is constantly evolving to focus on the latest intersection of marketing and technology. He has specifically focused on customer use and the adoption of self-service technologies, satisfaction with technology use, and the strategic implications of integrating technology within a firm. He has also done deep dives into the role of social media in the marketplace, and he next plans to look at AI and how it can help better interact with and serve customers.

“There is nothing better than working in a place where every day I am learning.  My research and teaching activities always push me to challenge my own thinking, find new ways of approaching problems, and to look for innovative solutions,” he said. “Sure, students learn in my classes, but I also learn a lot from them! Our campus is a world-class natural environment as well, so we are all blessed to be doing our work in beautiful surroundings.”

Meuter’s contributions to his discipline don’t end with his own scholarly works and conference presentations. He’s a Faculty Research Fellow with the Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State University, and on the Editorial Review Board for the Journal of Services Marketing. He has a lengthy history of serving as a reviewer for journals within his discipline, is a regular co-author with his colleagues, and serves as a member of the American Marketing Association, Marketing Educators Association, and Academy of Marketing Science, and Association for Psychological Sciences.

At Chico State, he also lends his time to numerous campuswide, college, and department committees shaping everything from leadership to faculty hires to campus planning and policies. The campus connection is quite special to Meuter, he admits, as the opportunity to teach here was a homecoming—not only as someone with two degrees from Chico State but his father, Ralph Meuter, was a geography professor and dean of what is now Professional & Continuing Education.

He has a BS in accounting and an MBA from Chico State, and a PhD in marketing from Arizona State University. He has worked at Chico State since 2000.