Maria Lexhagen
Professor|Professor
- Professional title: Professor
- Academic title: Professor
- Telephone: +46 (0)10-1428339
- Email: maria.lexhagen@miun.se
- Visitor address: Studentplan 1, Campus Östersund
- Room number: A324
- Location: Östersund
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- Employed at the subject:
- Tourism Studies
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- Research centers:
- ETOUR
Background
I’m full professor in tourism studies with a doctoral degree in business from School of Business, Economics and Law, Gothenburg University. My research interests are mostly based in marketing and consumer behaviour in tourism, but also destination management and development. Digitalisation and different technology as well as sustainability are important aspects of my research. For a long time, I have also done research on popular culture tourism. Either in terms of what it means as a fan to travel to destinations associated with different popular culture phenomena such as in music, film, TV, sport or other genres, or what it means for the places that people visit.
Area of interest
Consumer behaviour and marketing in tourism:
- Customer perceived value
- Destination branding, management and development
- Digitalisation and social media
- Popular culture tourism
- Business intelligence for destination development
Research
Selected on-going research themes:
- Customer perceived value in relation to tourist experiences and with aspects of sustainability
- Popular culture tourism as a tourist experience and for development of destinations
- Destination branding and value creation in relation to sustainability
- Business intelligence in turism – getting customer-based knowledge for destination management and development
- Visual aspects of tourist experiences, in particular digital visual aspects
Teaching and tutoring
I primarily teach in tourism studies within the bachelor program Tourism and Destination development, various online courses, the master-/magister program and the PhD program in tourism studies where I also supervise PhD students. I also engage regularly in communication of research to audiences outside of academia.
Other information
I'm an associate editor for the scientific journal Consumer Behaviour in Tourism and Hospitality and also member of the board of the scientific journal Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism.
For a long time I was a member of the faculty council for third-cycle education. I was also previously the director of the research center Etour at Mid Sweden University and I the head of the discipline of tourism studies. In these roles I was for many years engaged in quality evaluation of education and research. Furthermore, I regularly do expert evaluations for other universities and participate in reference groups for various projects.